[m] Brucker, p. 733, 912. Mr. Turner has fallen into some confusion as to this point, and supposes the nominalist system to have had a pantheistical tendency, not clearly apprehending its characteristics, p. 512.
[n] Petrarch gives a curious account of the irreligion that prevailed among the learned at Venice and Padua, in consequence of their unbounded admiration for Aristotle and Averroes. One of this school, conversing with him, after expressing much contempt for the Apostles and Fathers, exclaimed: Utinam tu Averroim pati posses, ut videres quanto ille tuis his nugatoribus major sit! Mém. de Pétrarque, t. iii. p. 759. Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 162.
[o] Brucker, p. 898.
[p] This mystical philosophy appears to have been introduced into Europe by John Scotus, whom Buhle treats as the founder of the scholastic philosophy; though, as it made no sensible progress for two centuries after his time, it seems more natural to give that credit to Roscelin and Anselm. Scotus, or Erigena, as he is perhaps more frequently called, took up, through the medium of a spurious work, ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, that remarkable system, which has from time immemorial prevailed in some schools of the East, wherein all external phenomena, as well as all subordinate intellects, are considered as emanating from the Supreme Being, into whose essence they are hereafter to be absorbed. This system, reproduced under various modifications, and combined with various theories of philosophy and religion, is perhaps the most congenial to the spirit of solitary speculation, and consequently the most extensively diffused of any which those high themes have engendered. It originated no doubt in sublime conceptions of divine omnipotence and ubiquity. But clearness of expression, or indeed of ideas, being not easily connected with mysticism, the language of philosophers adopting the theory of emanation is often hardly distinguishable from that of the pantheists. Brucker, very unjustly, as I imagine from the passages he quotes, accuses John Erigena of pantheism. Hist. Crit. Philos. p. 620. The charge would, however, be better grounded against some whose style might deceive an unaccustomed reader. In fact, the philosophy of emanation leads very nearly to the doctrine of an universal substance, which, begot the atheistic system of Spinoza, and which appears to have revived with similar consequences among the metaphysicians of Germany. How very closely the language of this oriental philosophy, or even that which regards the Deity as the soul of the world, may verge upon pantheism, will be perceived (without the trouble of reading the first book of Cudworth) from two famous passages of Virgil and Lucan. Georg. I. iv. v. 219; and Pharsalia, I. viii. v. 578.
[q] This subject, as well as some others in this part of the present chapter, has been touched in my Introduction to the Literature of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries.
[r] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 150.
[] There is a very copious and sensible account of Roger Bacon in Wood's History of Oxford, vol. i. p. 332 (Gutch's edition). I am a little surprised that Antony should have found out Bacon's merit.
The resemblance between Roger Bacon and his greater namesake is very remarkable. Whether Lord Bacon ever read the Opus Majus, I know not; but it is singular, that his favourite quaint expression, prærogativæ scientiarum, should be found in that work, though not used with the same allusion to the Roman comitia. And whoever reads the sixth part of the Opus Majus, upon experimental science, must be struck by it as the prototype, in spirit, of the Novum Organum. The same sanguine and sometimes rash confidence in the effect of physical discoveries, the same fondness for experiment, the same preference of inductive to abstract reasoning, pervade both works. Roger Bacon's philosophical spirit may be illustrated by the following passage: Duo sunt modi cognoscendi; scilicet per argumentum et experimentum. Argumentum concludit et facit nos concludere quæstionem; sed non certificat neque removet dubitationem, ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat viâ experientiæ; quia multi habent argumenta ad scibilia, sed quia non habent experientiam, negligunt ea, neque vitant nociva nec persequuntur bona. Si enim aliquis homo, qui nunquam vidit ignem, probavit per argumenta sufficientia quod ignis comburit et lædit res et destruit, nunquam propter hoc quiesceret animus audientis, nec ignem vitaret antequam poneret manum vel rem combustibilem ad ignem, ut per experientiam probaret quod argumentum edocebat; sed assumtâ experientiâ combustionis certificatur animus et quiescit in fulgore veritatis, quo argumentum non sufficit, sed experientia. p. 446.
[t] See the fate of Cecco d'Ascoli in Tiraboschi, t. v. p. 174.
[] Le Bœuf, Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscript. t. xvii. p. 711.