REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita. Vol. I, Containing, I. Opus Tertium,--II. Opus Minus,--III. Compendium Philosophiae. Edited by J.S. BREWER, M.A., Professor of English Literature, King's College, London, and Reader at the Rolls. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts. 1859. 8vo. pp. c., 573.
Sir John Romilly has shown good judgment in including the unpublished works of Roger Bacon in the series of "Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," now in course of publication under his direction. They are in a true sense important memorials of the period at which they were written, and, though but incidentally illustrating the events of the time, they are of great value in indicating the condition of thought and learning as well as the modes of mental discipline and acquisition during the thirteenth century.
The memory of Roger Bacon has received but scant justice. Although long since recognized as one of the chief lights of England during the Middle Ages, the clinging mist of popular tradition has obscured his real brightness and distorted its proportions, while even among scholars he has been more known by reputation than by actual acquaintance with his writings. His principal work, his "Opus Majus," was published for the first time in London in 1733, in folio, and afterwards at Venice in 1750, in the same form. Down to the publication of the volume before us, it was the only one of his writings of much importance which had been printed complete, if indeed it is to be called complete,--the Seventh Part having been omitted by the editor, Dr. Jebb, and never having since been published.
The facts known concerning Roger Bacon's life are few, and are so intermingled with tradition that it is difficult wholly to separate them from it. Born of a good family at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, near the beginning of the thirteenth century, he was placed in early youth at Oxford, whence, after completing his studies in grammar and logic, "he proceeded to Paris," says Anthony Wood, "according to the fashion prevalent among English scholars of those times, especially among the members of the University of Oxford." Here, under the famous masters of the day, he devoted himself to study for some years, and made such progress that he received the degree of Doctor in Divinity. Returning to Oxford, he seems soon to have entered into the Franciscan Order, for the sake of securing a freedom from worldly cares, that he might the more exclusively give himself to his favorite pursuits. At various times he lectured at the University. He spent some later years out of England, probably again in Paris. His life was embittered by the suspicions felt in regard to his studies by the brethren of his order, and by their opposition, which proceeded to such lengths that it is said he was cast into prison, where, according to one report, he died wretchedly. However this may have been, his death took place before the beginning of the fourteenth century. The scientific and experimental studies which had brought him into ill-favor with his own order, and had excited the suspicion against him of dealing in magic and forbidden arts, seem to have sown the seed of the popular traditions which at once took root around his name. Friar Bacon soon became, and indeed has remained almost to the present day, a half-mythical character. To the imagination of the common people, he was a great necromancer; he had had dealings with the Evil One, who had revealed many of the secrets of Nature to him; he had made a head of brass that could speak and foretell future events; and to him were attributed other not less wonderful inventions, which seem to have formed a common stock for popular legends of this sort during the Middle Ages, and to have been ascribed indiscriminately to one philosopher or another in various countries and in various times.[[9]] The references in our early literature to Friar Bacon, as one who had had familiarity with spirits and been a master in magic arts, are so numerous as to show that the belief in these stories was wide-spread, and that the real character of the learned Friar was quite given over to oblivion. But time slowly brings about its revenges; and the man whom his ignorant and stupid fellows thought fit to hamper and imprison, and whom popular credulity looked upon with that half-horror and half-admiration with which those were regarded who were supposed to have put their souls in pawn for the sake of tasting the forbidden fruit, is now recognized not only as one of the most profound and clearest thinkers of his time, but as the very first among its experimental philosophers, and as a prophet of truths which, then neglected and despised, have since been adopted as axioms in the progress of science. "The precursor of Galileo," says M. Hauréau, in his work on Scholastic Philosophy, "he learned before him how rash it is to offend the prejudices of the multitude, and to desire to give lessons to the ignorant."
The range of Roger Bacon's studies was encyclopedic, comprehending all the branches of learning then open to scholars. Brucker, in speaking of him in his History of Philosophy, has no words strong enough to express his admiration for his abilities and learning. "Seculi sui indolem multum superavit," "vir summus, tantaque occultioris philosophiae cognitione et experientia nobilis, ut merito Doctoris Mirabilis titulum reportaverit."[[10]] The logical and metaphysical studies, in the intricate subtilties of which most of the schoolmen of his time involved themselves, presented less attraction to Bacon than the pursuits of physical science and the investigation of Nature. His genius, displaying the practical bent of his English mind, turning with weariness from the endless verbal discussions of the Nominalists and Realists, and recognizing the impossibility of solving the questions which divided the schools of Europe into two hostile camps, led him to the study of branches of knowledge that were held in little repute. He recognized the place of mathematics as the basis of exact science, and proceeded to the investigation of the facts and laws of optics, mechanics, chemistry, and astronomy. But he did not limit himself to positive science; he was at the same time a student of languages and of language, of grammar and of music. He was versed not less in the arts of the Trivium than in the sciences of the Quadrivium.[[11]]
But in rejecting the method of study then in vogue, and in opposing the study of facts to that of questions which by their abstruseness fatigued the intellect, which were of more worth in sharpening the wit than in extending the limits of knowledge, and which led rather to vain contentions than to settled conclusions,--in thus turning from the investigation of abstract metaphysics to the study of Nature, Roger Bacon went so far before his age as to condemn himself to solitude, to misappreciation, and to posthumous neglect. Unlike men of far narrower minds, but more conformed to the spirit of the times, he founded no school, and left no disciples to carry out the system which he had advanced, and which was one day to have its triumph. At the end of the thirteenth century the scholastic method was far from having run its career. The minds of men were occupied with problems which it alone seemed to be able to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their orders.[[12]] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to discussion, and it was vain to attempt to convince the heated partisans on one side or the other, that the truths they sought were beyond the reach of human faculties, and that their dialectics and metaphysics served to bewilder more than to enlighten the intellect. The disciples of subtile speculatists like Aquinas, or of fervent mystics like Bonaventura, were not likely to recognize the worth and importance of the slow processes of experimental philosophy.
The qualities of natural things, the limits of intellectual powers, the relations of man to the universe, the conditions of matter and spirit, the laws of thought, were too imperfectly understood for any man to attain to a comprehensive and correct view of the sources and methods of study and discovery of the truth. Bacon shared in what may he called, without a sneer, the childishnesses of his time, childishnesses often combined with mature powers and profound thought. No age is fully conscious of its own intellectual disproportions; and what now seem mere puerilities in the works of the thinkers of the Middle Ages were perhaps frequently the result of as laborious effort and as patient study as what we still prize in them for its manly vigor and permanent worth. In a later age, the Centuries of the "Sylva Sylvarum" afford a curious comment on the Aphorisms of the "Novum Organum."
The "Opus Majus" of Bacon was undertaken in answer to a demand of Pope Clement IV. in 1266, and was intended to contain a review of the whole range of science, as then understood, with the exception of logic. Clement had apparently become personally acquainted with Bacon, at the time when, as legate of the preceding Pope, he had been sent to England on an ineffectual mission to compose the differences between Henry III. and his barons, and he appears to have formed a just opinion of the genius and learning of the philosopher.
The task to which Bacon had been set by the Papal mandate was rapidly accomplished, in spite of difficulties which might have overcome a less resolute spirit; but the work extended to such great length in his hands, that he seems to have felt a not unnatural fear that Clement, burdened with the innumerable cares of the Pontificate, would not find leisure for its perusal, much less for the study which some part of it demanded. With this fear, fearful also that portions of his work might be deficient in clearness, and dreading lest it might be lost on its way to Rome, he proceeded to compose a second treatise, called the "Opus Minus," to serve as an abstract and specimen of his greater work, and to embrace some additions to its matter. Unfortunately, but a fragment of this second work has been preserved, and this fragment is for the first time published in the volume just issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. But the "Opus Minus" was scarcely completed before he undertook a third work, to serve as an introduction and preamble to both the preceding. This has been handed down to us complete, and this, too, is for the first time printed in the volume before us. We take the account of it given by Professor Brewer, the editor, in his introduction.
"Inferior to its predecessors in the importance
of its scientific details and the illustration
it supplies of Bacon's philosophy, it is
more interesting than either, for the insight
it affords of his labors, and of the numerous
obstacles he had to contend with in the execution
of his work. The first twenty chapters
detail various anecdotes of Bacon's personal
history, his opinions on the state of
education, the impediments thrown in his
way by the ignorance, the prejudices, the
contempt, the carelessness, the indifference
of his contemporaries. From the twentieth
chapter to the close of the volume he pursues
the thread of the Opus Majus, supplying what
he had there omitted, correcting and explaining
what had been less clearly or correctly
expressed in that or in the Opus Minus. In
Chapter LII. he apologizes for diverging from
the strict line he had originally marked out,
by inserting in the ten preceding chapters his
opinions on three abstruse subjects, Vacuum,
Motion, and Space, mainly in regard to their
spiritual significance. 'As these questions,'
he says,' are very perplexing and difficult, I
thought I would record what I had to say
about them in some one of my works. In the
Opus Majus and Opus Minus I had not studied
them sufficiently to prevail on myself to
commit my thoughts about them to writing;
and I was glad to omit them, owing to the
length of those works, and because I was
much hurried in their composition.' From the
fifty-second chapter to the close of the volume
he adheres to his subject without further digression,
but with so much vigor of thought
and freshness of observations, that, like the
Opus Minus, the Opus Tertium may be fairly
considered an independent work."--pp.
xliv-xlv.[[13]]