There seems to have been nothing exceptional in Bacon’s attitude toward Scripture and the doctrines of the Church. He deemed, with other mediaeval men, that Scripture held, at least implicitly, the sum of knowledge useful or indeed possible for men. True, neither the Old Testament nor the New treats of grammar, or physics, or of minerals, or plants, or animals. Nevertheless, the statements in these revealed writings are made with complete knowledge of every topic or thing considered or referred to—bird, beast, and plant, the courses of the stars, the earth and its waters, yea, the arts of song or agriculture, and the principles of every science. Conversely (and here Bacon even gave fresh emphasis and novel pointings to the current view) all knowledge whatsoever, every art and science, is needed for the full understanding of Scripture, sacra doctrina, in a word, theology. This opinion may hold large truth; but Bacon’s advocacy of it sometimes affects us as a reductio ad absurdum, especially when he is proceeding on the assumption that the patriarchs and prophets had knowledge of all sciences, including astrology and the connection between the courses of the stars and the truth of Christianity.
There was likewise nothing startling in Bacon’s view of the Fathers, and their knowledge and authoritativeness. Thomas did not regard them as inspired. Neither did Bacon; he respects them, yet discerns limitations to their knowledge; by reason of their circumstances they may have neglected certain of the sciences; but this is no reason why we should.[623]
As for the ancient philosophers, Bacon holds to their partial inspiration. “God illuminated their minds to desire and perceive the truths of philosophy. He even disclosed the truth to them.”[624] They received their knowledge from God, indirectly as it were, through the prophets, to whom God revealed it directly. More than once and with every detail of baseless tradition, he sets forth the common view that the Greek philosophers studied the prophets, and drew their wisdom from that source.[625] But their knowledge was not complete; and it behoves us to know much that is not in Aristotle.[626]
“The study of wisdom may always increase in this life, because nothing is perfect in human discoveries. Therefore, we later men ought to supplement the defects of the ancients, since we have entered into their labours, through which, unless we are asses, we may be incited to improve upon them. It is most wretched always to be using what has been attained, and never reach further for one’s self.”[627]
It may be that Bacon was suspected of raising the philosophers too near the Christian level; and perhaps his argument that their knowledge had come from the prophets may have seemed a vain excuse. Says he, for example:
“There was a great book of Aristotle upon civil science,[628] well agreeing with the Christian law; for the law of Aristotle has precepts like the Christian law, although much is added in the latter excelling all human science. The Christian law takes whatever is worthy in the civil philosophical law. For God gave the philosophers all truth, as the saints, and especially Augustine, declare.... And what noble thoughts have they expressed upon God, the blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, Christ, the blessed Virgin, and the angels.”[629]
Possibly one is here reminded of Abaelard, and his thought of Christianity as reformatio legis naturalis. Yet Christ had said, He came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the chief Christian theologians had followed Augustine in “despoiling the Egyptians” as he phrased it; the very process which in fact was making the authority of Aristotle supreme in Bacon’s time. So there was little that was peculiar or suspicious in Bacon’s admiration of the philosophers.
The trouble with Bacon becomes clearer as we turn to his views upon the state of knowledge in his time, and the methods of contemporary doctors in rendering it worse, rather than better. These doctors were largely engaged upon sacra doctrina; they were primarily theologians and expounders of the truth of revelation. Bacon’s criticism of their methods might disparage that to which those methods were applied. His caustic enumeration of the four everlasting causes of error, and the seven vices infecting the study of theology, will show reason enough why his error-stricken and infected contemporaries wished to close his mouth. The anxiousness of some might sour to enmity under the acerbity of his attack; nor would their hearts be softened by Bacon’s boasting that these various doctors, of course including Albert, could not write in ten years what he is sending to the pope.[630] Bacon declares that there is at Paris a great man (was it Albert? was it Thomas?), who is set up as an authority in the schools, like Aristotle or Averroes; and his works display merely “infinite puerile vanity,” “ineffable falsity,” superfluous verbiage, and the omission of the most needful parts of philosophy.[631] Bacon is not content with abusing members of the rival Dominican Order; but includes in his contempt the venerable Alexander of Hales, the defunct light of the Franciscans. “Nullum ordinem excludo,” cries he, in his sweeping denunciation of his epoch’s rampant sins. As for the seculars, why, they can only lecture by stealing the copy-books of the “boys” in the “aforesaid Orders.”[632] “Never,” says Bacon in the Compendium studii from which the last phrases are taken, “has there been such a show of wisdom, nor such prosecution of study in so many faculties through so many regions as in the last forty years. Doctors are spread everywhere, especially in theology, in every city, castle, and burg, chiefly through the two student Orders. Yet there was never so great ignorance and so much error—as shall appear from this writing.”[633]
Bacon never loses a chance of stating the four causes of the error and ignorance about him. These causes preyed upon his mind—he would have said they preyed upon the age. They are elaborately expounded in pars i. of the Opus majus:[634]
“There are four principal stumbling blocks (offendicula) to comprehending truth, which hinder well-nigh every one: the example of frail and unworthy authority, long-established custom, the sense of the ignorant crowd (vulgi sensus imperiti), and the hiding of one’s own ignorance under the pretence of wisdom. In these, every man is involved and every state beset. For in every act of life, or business, or study, these three worst arguments are used for the same conclusion: this was the way of our ancestors, this is the custom, this is the common view: therefore should be held. But the opposite of this conclusion follows much better from the premises, as I will prove through authority, experience, and reason. If these three are sometimes refuted by the glorious power of reason, the fourth is always ready, as a gloss for foolishness; so that, though a man know nothing of any value, he will impudently magnify it, and thus, soothing his wretched folly, defeat truth. From these deadly pests come all the evils of the human race; for the noblest and most useful documents of wisdom are ignored, and the secrets of the arts and sciences. Worse than this, men blinded by the darkness of these four do not see their ignorance, but take every care to palliate that for which they do not find the remedy; and what is the worst, when they are in the densest shades of error, they deem themselves in the full light of truth.”[635]