[Footnote 32: The letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet, A. D. 1269, translated by Bro. Arnold, M. Sc, with an Introductory Note by Bro. Potamian, N.Y., 1904.]
This letter of Roger Bacon contains every idea that the modern scientists contend for as significant in education. It counsels observation, not theory, and says very plainly what he thinks of much talk without a basis of observation. It commends a mastery in experiment as the most important thing for science. It suggests, of course, by implication at least, that a man should know all sciences and all applications of them; but surely no one will object to this medieval friar commending as great a breadth of mental development as possible, as the ideal of an educated man, and especially with regard to the experimental sciences. Finally, it has the surprising phrase, that Peregrinus pursues knowledge for its own sake. Friar Bacon evidently would have sympathized very heartily with Faraday, who at the beginning of the nineteenth century wanted to get out of trade and into science, because he thought it unworthy of man to spend all his life accumulating money, and considered that the only proper aim in life is to add to knowledge. He would have been in cordial accord with Pasteur, at the end of the century, who told the Empress Eugenie, when she asked him if he would not exploit his discoveries in fermentation for the purpose of building up a great [{290}] brewing industry in France, that he thought it unworthy of a French scientist to devote himself to a mere money-making industry.
For a man of the modern time, perhaps the most interesting expression that ever fell from Roger Bacon's lips is his famous proclamation of the reasons why men do not obtain genuine knowledge more rapidly than would seem ought to be the case, from the care and time and amount of work which they have devoted to its cultivation. This expression occurs in Bacon's Opus Tertium, which, it may be recalled, the Franciscan friar wrote at the command of Pope Clement, because the Pope had heard many interesting accounts of all that the great thirteenth century teacher and experimenter was doing at the University of Oxford, and wished to learn for himself the details of his work. Friar Bacon starts out with the principle that there are four grounds of human ignorance.
"These are: first, trust in adequate authority; second, that force of custom which leads men to accept too unquestioningly what has been accepted before their time; third, the placing of confidence in the opinion of the inexperienced; and fourth, the hiding of one's own ignorance with the parade of superficial knowledge." These reasons contain the very essence of the experimental method, and continue to be as important in the twentieth century as they were in the thirteenth. They could only have emanated from an eminently practical mind, accustomed to test by observation and by careful searching of authorities every proposition that came to him.
It is very evident that modern scientists would have more of kinship and intellectual sympathy with Friar [{291}] Bacon than most of them are apt to think possible. A faithful student of his writings, who was at the same time in many ways a cordial admirer of medievalism, the late Professor Henry Morley, who held the chair of English literature at University College, London, whose contributions to the History of English Literature are probably the most important of the nineteenth century, has a striking paragraph with regard to this attitude of Bacon toward knowledge and science--two words that have the same meaning etymologically, though they have come to have quite different connotations. In the third volume of his English Writers, page 321, Professor Morley, after quoting Bacon's four grounds of human ignorance, said:--
"No part of that ground has yet been cut away from beneath the feet of students, although six centuries ago the Oxford friar clearly pointed out its character. We still make sheep walks of second, third and fourth and fiftieth-hand references to authority; still we are the slaves of habit; still we are found following too frequently the untaught crowd; still we flinch from the righteous and wholesome phrase, 'I do not know,' and acquiesce actively in the opinion of others, that we know what we appear to know. Substitute honest research, original and independent thought, strict truth in the comparison of only what we really know with what is really known by others, and the strong redoubt of ignorance is fallen."
This attitude of mind of Friar Bacon toward the reasons for ignorance, is so different from what is usually predicated of the Middle Ages and of medieval scholars, that it seems worth while insisting on it. Authority is supposed to have meant everything for the scholastics, [{292}] and experiment is usually said to have counted for nothing. They are supposed to have been accustomed to swear to the words of the master--"jurare in verba magistri"--yet here is a great leader of medieval thought insisting on just the opposite. As clearly as ever it was proclaimed, Bacon announces that an authority is worth only the reasons that he advances. These thirteenth century teachers are supposed, above all, to have fairly bowed down and worshipped at the shrine of Aristotle. Many of them doubtless did. In every generation the great mass of mankind must find someone to follow. As often as not, their leaders are much more fallible than Aristotle. Bacon, however, had no undue reverence for Aristotle or anyone else, and he realized that the blind following of Aristotle had done much harm. In his sketch of Gilbert of Colchester, which was published in the "Popular Science Monthly" for August, 1901, Brother Potamian calls attention to this quality of Roger Bacon in a striking passage.
"Roger Bacon, after absorbing the learning of Oxford and Paris, wrote to the reigning Pontiff, Clement IV., urging him to have the works of the Stagirite burnt in order to stop the propagation of error in the schools. The Franciscan monk of Ilchester has left us, in his Opus Majus, a lasting memorial of his practical genius. In the section entitled, "Scientia Experimentalis," he affirms that "Without experiment, nothing can be adequately known. An argument proves theoretically, but does not give the certitude necessary to remove all doubt; nor will the mind repose in the clear view of truth, unless it finds it by way of experiment." And in his Opus Tertium: "The strongest arguments prove nothing, so long as the conclusions are not verified by [{293}] experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation."
Lest it should be thought that these expressions of laudatory appreciation of the great thirteenth century scientist are dictated more by the desire to magnify his work and to bring out the influence in science of the churchmen of the period, it seems well to quote an expression of opinion from the modern historian of the inductive sciences, whose praise is scarcely if any less outspoken than that of others whom we have quoted and who might be supposed to be somewhat partial in their judgment. This opinion will fortify the doubters who must have authority, and at the same time sums up very excellently the position which Roger Bacon occupies in the history of science.
Dr. Whewell says that Roger Bacon's Opus Majus is "the encyclopedia and Novum Organon of the thirteenth century, a work equally wonderful with regard to its general scheme and to the special treatises with which the outlines of the plans are filled up. The professed object of the work is to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made a greater progress, to draw back attention to the sources of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet almost untouched, and to animate men in the undertaking by a prospect of the best advantages which it offered. In the development of this plan all the leading portions of science are expanded in the most complete shape which they had at that time assumed; and improvements of a very wide and striking kind are proposed in some of the principal branches of study. Even if the work had no leading purposes it would have [{294}] been highly valuable as a treasure of the most solid knowledge and soundest speculations of the time; even if it had contained no such details, it would have been a work most remarkable for its general views and scope."