Bacon had occasion for lamenting not only the character of the translations in use, but also the fact that many of the most important works of the ancients were not translated at all, and hence lay out of the reach of all but the rare scholars, like himself and his friend Grostête, who were able, through their acquaintance with the languages in which they were written, to make use of them, provided manuscripts could be found for reading. "We have few useful works on philosophy in Latin. Aristotle composed a thousand volumes, as we read in his Life, and of these we have but three of any notable size, namely,--on Logic, Natural History, and Metaphysics; so that all the other scientific works that he composed are wanting to the Latins, except some tractates and small little books, and of these but very few. Of his Logic two of the best books are deficient, which Hermann had in Arabic, but did not venture to translate. One of them, indeed, he did translate, or caused to be translated, but so ill that the translation is of no sort of value and has never come into use. Aristotle wrote fifty excellent books about Animals, as Pliny says in the eighth book of his Natural History, and I have seen them in Greek, and of these the Latins have only nineteen wretchedly imperfect little books. Of his Metaphysics the Latins read only the ten books which they have, while there are many more; and of these ten which they read, many chapters are wanting in the translation, and almost infinite lines. Indeed, the Latins have nothing worthy; and therefore it is necessary that they should know the languages, for the sake of translating those things that are deficient and needful. For, moreover, of the works on secret sciences, in which the secrets and marvels of Nature are explored, they have little except fragments here and there, which scarcely suffice to excite the very wisest to study and experiment and to inquire by themselves after those things which are lacking to the dignity of wisdom; while the crowd of students are not moved to any worthy undertaking, and grow so languid and asinine over these ill translations, that they lose utterly their time and study and expense. They are held, indeed, by appearances alone; for they do not care what they know, but what they seem to know to the silly multitude."[[26]]
These passages may serve to show something of the nature of those external hindrances to knowledge with which Bacon himself had had to strive, which he overcame, and which he set himself with all his force to break down, that they might no longer obstruct the path of study. What scholar, what lover of learning, can now picture to himself such efforts without emotion,--without an almost oppressive sense of the contrast between the wealth of his own opportunities and the penury of the earlier scholar? On the shelves within reach of his hand lie the accumulated riches of time. Compare our libraries, with their crowded volumes of ancient and modern learning, with the bare cell of the solitary Friar, in which, in a single small cupboard, are laid away a few imperfect manuscripts, precious as a king's ransom, which it had been the labor of years to collect. This very volume of his works, a noble monument of patient labor, of careful investigation, of deep thought, costs us but a trivial sum; while its author, in his poverty, was scarcely able, without begging, to pay for the parchment upon which he wrote it, as, uncheered by the anticipation that centuries after his death men would prize the works he painfully accomplished, he leaned against his empty desk, half-discouraged by the difficulties that beset him. All honor to him! honor to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages! to the men who kept the traditions of wisdom alive, who trimmed the wick of the lamp of learning when its flame was flickering, and who, when its light grew dim and seemed to be dying out, supplied it with oil hardly squeezed by their own hands, drop by drop, from the scanty olives which they had gathered from the eternal tree of Truth! In these later days learning has become cheap. What sort of scholar must he now be, who should be worthy to be put into comparison with the philosopher of the thirteenth century?
The general scheme of Bacon's system of philosophy was at once simple and comprehensive. The scope of his thought had a breadth uncommon in his or in any time. In his view, the object of all philosophy and human learning was to enable men to attain to the wisdom of God; and to this end it was to be subservient absolutely, and relatively so far as regarded the Church, the government of the state, the conversion of infidels, and the repression of those who could not be converted. All wisdom was included in the Sacred Scriptures, if properly understood and explained. "I believe," said he, "that the perfection of philosophy is to raise it to the state of a Christian law." Wisdom was the gift of God, and as such it included the knowledge of all things in heaven and earth, the knowledge of God himself, of the teachings of Christ, the beauty of virtue, the honesty of laws, the eternal life of glory and of punishment, the resurrection of the dead, and all things else.[[27]]
To this end all special sciences were ordained. All these, properly speaking, were to be called speculative; and though they each might be divided into two parts, the practical and the speculative, yet one alone, the most noble and best of all, in respect to which there was no comparison with the others, was in its own nature practical: this was the science of morals, or moral philosophy. All the works of Art and Nature are subservient to morals, and are of value only as they promote it. They are as nothing without it; as the whole wisdom of philosophy is as nothing without the wisdom of the Christian faith. This science of morals has six principal divisions. The first of these is theological, treating of the relations of man to God and to spiritual things; the second is political, treating of public laws and the government of states; the third is ethical, treating of virtue and vice; the fourth treats of the revolutions of religious sects, and of the proofs of the Christian faith.
"This is the best part of all philosophy." Experimental science and the knowledge of languages come into use here. The fifth division is hortatory, or of morals as applied to duty, and embraces the art of rhetoric and other subsidiary arts. The sixth and final division treats of the relations of morals to the execution of justice.[[28]] Under one or other of these heads all special sciences and every branch of learning are included.
Such, then, being the object and end of all learning, it is to be considered in what manner and by what methods study is to be pursued, to secure the attainment of truth. And here occurs one of the most remarkable features of Bacon's system. It is in his distinct statement of the prime importance of experiment as the only test of certainty in the sciences. "However strong arguments may be, they do not give certainty, apart from positive experience of a conclusion." "It is the prerogative of experiment to test the noble conclusions of all sciences which are drawn from arguments." All science is ancillary to it.[[29]] And of all branches of learning, two are of chief importance: languages are the first gate of wisdom; mathematics the second.[[30]] By means of foreign tongues we gain the wisdom which men have collected in past times and other countries; and without them the sciences are not to be pursued, for the requisite books are wanting in the Latin tongue. Even theology must fail without a knowledge of the original texts of the Sacred Writings and of their earliest expositors. Mathematics are of scarcely less importance; "for he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other physical science,--what is more, cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedies." "The sciences cannot be known by logical and sophistical arguments, such as are commonly used, but only by mathematical demonstrations."[[31]] But this view of the essential importance of these two studies did not prevent Bacon from rising to the height from which he beheld the mutual importance and relations of all knowledge. We do not know where to find a clearer statement of the connection of the sciences than in the following words:--"All sciences are connected, and support each other with mutual aid, as parts of the same whole, of which each performs its work, not for itself alone, but for the others as well: as the eye directs the whole body, and the foot supports the whole; so that any part of knowledge taken from the rest is like an eye torn out or a foot cut off."[[32]]
Such, then, in brief, appears to have been Bacon's general system of philosophy. He has nowhere presented it in a compact form; and his style of writing is often so corrupt, and his use of terms so inexact, that any exposition of his views, exhibiting them in a methodical arrangement, is liable to the charge of possessing a definiteness of statement beyond that which his opinions had assumed in his own mind. Still, the view that has now been given of his philosophy corresponds as nearly as may be with the indications afforded by his works. The details of his system present many points of peculiar interest. He was not merely a theorist, with speculative views of a character far in advance of those of the mass of contemporary schoolmen, but a practical investigator as well, who by his experiments and discoveries pushed forward the limits of knowledge, and a sound scholar who saw and displayed to others the true means by which progress in learning was to be secured. In this latter respect, no parts of his writings are more remarkable than those in which he urges the importance of philological and linguistic studies. His remarks on comparative grammar, on the relations of languages, on the necessity of the study of original texts, are distinguished by good sense, by extensive and (for the time) exact scholarship, and by a breadth of view unparalleled, so far as we are aware, by any other writer of his age. The treatise on the Greek Grammar--which occupies a large portion of the incomplete "Compendium Studii Philosophiae," and which is broken off in the middle by the mutilation of the manuscript--contains, in addition to many curious remarks illustrative of the learning of the period, much matter of permanent interest to the student of language. The passages which we have quoted in regard to the defects of the translations of Greek authors show to how great a degree the study of Greek and other ancient tongues had been neglected. Most of the scholars of the day contented themselves with collecting the Greek words which they found interpreted in the works of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Origen, Martianus Capella, Boëthius, and a few other later Latin authors; and were satisfied to use these interpretations without investigation of their exactness, or without understanding their meaning. Hugo of Saint Victor, (Dante's "Ugo di Sanvittore è qui con elli,") one of the most illustrious of Bacon's predecessors, translates, for instance, mechanica by adulterina, as if it came from the Latin moecha, and derives economica from oequus, showing that he, like most other Western scholars, was ignorant even of the Greek letters.[[33]] Michael Scot, in respect to whose translations Bacon speaks with merited contempt, exhibits the grossest ignorance, in his version from the Arabic of Aristotle's History of Animals, for example, a passage in which Aristotle speaks of taming the wildest animals, and says, "Beneficio enim mitescunt, veluti crocodilorum genus afficitur erga sacerdotem a quo enratur ut alantur," ("They become mild with kind treatment, as crocodiles toward the priest who provides them with food,") is thus unintelligibly rendered by him: "Genus autem karoluoz et hirdon habet pacem lehhium et domesticatur cum illo, quoniam cogitat de suo cibo." [[34]] Such a medley makes it certain that he knew neither Greek nor Arabic, and was willing to compound a third language, as obscure to his readers as the original was to him. Bacon points out many instances of this kind; and it is against such errors--errors so destructive to all learning--that he inveighs with the full force of invective, and protests with irresistible arguments. His acquirements in Greek and in Hebrew prove that he had devoted long labor to the study of these languages, and that he understood them far better than many scholars who made more pretence of learning. Nowhere are the defects of the scholarship of the Middle Ages more pointedly and ably exhibited than in what he has said of them. But, although his knowledge in this field was of uncommon quality and amount, it does not seem to have surpassed his acquisitions in science. "I have attempted," he says in a striking passage, "with great diligence, to attain certainty as to what is needful to be known concerning the processes of alchemy and natural philosophy and medicine.... And what I have written of the roots [of these sciences] is, in my judgment, worth far more than all that the other natural philosophers now alive suppose themselves to know; for in vain, without these roots, do they seek for branches, flowers, and fruit. And here I am boastful in words, but not in my soul; for I say this because I grieve for the infinite error that now exists, and that I may urge you [the Pope] to a consideration of the truth."[[35]] Again he says, in regard to his treatise "De Perspectiva," or On Optics,--"Why should I conceal the truth? I assert that there is no one among the Latin scholars who could accomplish, in the space of a year, this work; no, nor even in ten years."[[36]] In mathematics, in chemistry, in optics, in mechanics, he was, if not superior, at least equal, to the best of his contemporaries. His confidence in his own powers was the just result of self-knowledge and self-respect. Natural genius, and the accumulations of forty years of laborious study pursued with a method superior to that which guided the studies of others, had set him at the head of the learned men of his time; and he was great enough to know and to claim his place. He had the self-devotion of enthusiasm, and its ready, but dignified boldness, based upon the secure foundation of truth.
In spite of the very imperfect style in which he wrote, and the usually clumsy and often careless construction of his sentences, his works contain now and then noble thoughts expressed with simplicity and force. "Natura est instrumentum Divinae operationis," might be taken as the motto for his whole system of natural science. In speaking of the value of words, he says,--"Sed considerare debemus quod verba habent maximam potestatem, et omnia miracula facta a principio mundi fere facta sunt per verba. Et opus animae rationalis praecipuum est verbum, et in quo maxime delectatur." In the "Opus Tertium," at the point where he begins to give an abstract of his "Opus Majus," he uses words which remind one of the famous "Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit." He says,--"Cogitavi quod intellectus humanus habet magnam debilitationem ex se.... Et ideo volui excludere errorum corde hominis impossible est ipsum videre veritatem." This is strikingly similar to Lord Bacon's "errores qui invaluerunt, quique in aeternum invalituri sunt, alii post alios, si mens sibi permittatur." Such citations of passages remarkable for thought or for expression might be indefinitely extended, but we have space for only one more, in which the Friar attacks the vices of the Roman court with an energy that brings to mind the invectives of the greatest of his contemporaries. "Curia Romana, quae solebat et debet regi sapientia Dei, nunc depravatur.... Laceratur enim illa sedes sacra fraudibus et dolis injustorum. Pent justitia; pax omnis violatur; infinita scandala suscitantur. Mores enim sequuntur ibidem perversissimi; regnat superbia, ardet avaritia, invidia corrodit singulos, luxuria diffamat totam illam curiam, gula in omnibus dominatur." It was not the charge of magic alone that brought Roger Bacon's works into discredit with the Church, and caused a nail to be driven through their covers to keep the dangerous pages closed tightly within.
There is no reason to doubt that Bacon's investigations led him to discoveries of essential value, but which for the most part died with him. His active and piercing intellect, which employed itself on the most difficult subjects, which led him to the formation of a theory of tides, and brought him to see the need and with prophetic anticipation to point out the means of a reformation of the calendar, enabled him to discover many of what were then called the Secrets of Nature. The popular belief that he was the inventor of gunpowder had its origin in two passages in his treatise "On the Secret Works of Art and Nature, and on the Nullity of Magic,"[[37]] in one of which he describes some of its qualities, while in the other he apparently conceals its composition under an enigma.[[38]] He had made experiments with Greek fire and the magnet; he had constructed burning-glasses, and lenses of various power; and had practised with multiplying-mirrors, and with mirrors that magnified and diminished. It was no wonder that a man who knew and employed such wonderful things, who was known, too, to have sought for artificial gold, should gain the reputation of a wizard, and that his books should be looked upon with suspicion. As he himself says,--"Many books are esteemed magic, which are not so, but contain the dignity of knowledge." And he adds,--"For, as it is unworthy and unlawful for a wise man to deal with magic, so it is superfluous and unnecessary."[[39]]
There is a passage in this treatise "On the Nullity of Magic" of remarkable character, as exhibiting the achievements, or, if not the actual achievements, the things esteemed possible by the inventors of the thirteenth century. There is in it a seeming mixture of fancy and of fact, of childish credulity with more than mere haphazard prophecy of mechanical and physical results which have been so lately reached in the progress of science as to be among new things even six centuries after Bacon's death. Its positiveness of statement is puzzling, when tested by what is known from other sources of the nature of the discoveries and inventions of that early time; and were there reason to question Bacon's truth, it would seem as if he had mistaken his dreams for facts. As it stands, it is one of the most curious existing illustrations of the state of physical science in the Middle Ages. It runs as follows:--"I will now, in the first place, speak of some of the wonderful works of Art and Nature, that I may afterwards assign the causes and methods of them, in which there is nothing magical, so that it may be seen how inferior and worthless all magic power is, in comparison with these works. And first, according to the fashion and rule of Art alone. Thus, machines can be made for navigation without men to row them; so that ships of the largest size, whether on rivers or the sea, can be carried forward, under the guidance of a single man, at greater speed than if they were full of men [rowers]. In like manner, a car can be made which will move, without the aid of any animal, with incalculable impetus; such as we suppose the scythed chariots to have been which were anciently used in battle. Also, machines for flying can be made, so that a man may sit in the middle of the machine, turning an engine, by which wings artificially disposed are made to beat the air after the manner of a bird in flight. Also, an instrument, small in size, for raising and depressing almost infinite weights, than which nothing on occasion is more useful: for, with an instrument of three fingers in height, and of the same width, and of smaller bulk, a man might deliver himself and his companions from all danger of prison, and could rise or descend. Also, an instrument might be easily made by which one man could draw to himself a thousand men by force and against their will, and in like manner draw other things. Instruments can be made for walking in the sea or in rivers, even at the bottom, without bodily risk: for Alexander the Great made use of this to see the secrets of the sea, as the Ethical Astronomer relates. These things were made in ancient times, and are made in our times, as is certain; except, perhaps, the machine for flying, which I have not seen, nor have I known any one who had seen it, but I know a wise man who thought to accomplish this device. And almost an infinite number of such things can be made; as bridges across rivers without piers or any supports, and machines and unheard-of engines." Bacon goes on to speak of other wonders of Nature and Art, to prove, that, to produce marvellous effects, it is not necessary to aspire to the knowledge of magic, and ends this division of his subject with words becoming a philosopher:--"Yet wise men are now ignorant of many things which the common crowd of students [vulgus studentium] will know in future times."[[40]]