[89] If I might take the liberty of criticising an author who has given a very interesting view of the period in question (Mahometanism Unveiled, by the Rev. Charles Forster, 1829), I would remark, that in his work this caution is perhaps too little observed. Thus, he says, in speaking of Alhazen (vol. ii. p. 270), “the theory of the telescope may be found in the work of this astronomer;” and of another, “the uses of magnifying glasses and telescopes, and the principle of their construction, are explained in the Great Work of (Roger) Bacon, with a truth and clearness which have commanded universal admiration.” Such phrases would be much too strong, even if used respecting the optical doctrines of Kepler, which were yet incomparably more true and clear than those of Bacon. To employ such language, in such cases, is to deprive such terms as theory and principle of all meaning.
The credit due to the Arabians for improvements in the general methods of philosophizing, is a more difficult question; and cannot be discussed at length by us, till we examine the history of such methods in the abstract, which, in the present work, it is not our intention to do. But we may observe, that we cannot agree with those who rank their merits high in this respect. We have already seen, that their minds were completely devoured by the worst habits of the stationary period,—Mysticism and Commentation. They followed their Greek leaders, for the most part, with abject servility, and with only that kind of acuteness and independent speculation which the Commentator’s vocation implies. And in their choice of the standard subjects of their studies, they fixed upon those works, the Physical Books of Aristotle, which have never promoted the progress of science, except in so far as they incited men to refute them; an effect which they never produced on the Arabians. That the Arabian astronomers made some advances beyond the Greeks, we have already stated: the two great instances are, the discovery of the Motion of the Sun’s Apogee by Albategnius, and the discovery (recently brought to light) of the existence of the Moon’s Second Inequality, by Aboul Wefa. But we cannot but observe in how different a manner they treated these discoveries, from that with which Hipparchus or Ptolemy would have done. The Variation of the Moon, in particular, instead of being incorporated into the system by means of an Epicycle, as Ptolemy had done with the Evection, was allowed, almost immediately, so far as we can judge, to fall into neglect and oblivion: so little were the learned Arabians prepared to take their lessons from observation as well as from books. That in many subjects they made experiments, may easily be allowed: there never was a period of the earth’s history, and least of all a period of commerce [245] and manufactures, luxury and art, medicine and engineering, in which there were not going on innumerable processes, which may be termed Experiments; and, in addition to these, the Arabians adopted the pursuit of alchemy, and the love of exotic plants and animals. But so far from their being, as has been maintained,[90] a people whose “experimental intellect” fitted them to form sciences which the “abstract intellect” of the Greeks failed in producing, it rather appears, that several of the sciences which the Greeks had founded, were never even comprehended by the Arabians. I do not know any evidence that these pupils ever attained to understand the real principles of Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Harmonics, which their masters had established. At any rate, when these sciences again became progressive, Europe had to start where Europe had stopped. There is no Arabian name which any one has thought of interposing between Archimedes the ancient, and Stevinus and Galileo the moderns.
[90] Mahometanism Unveiled, ii. 271.
4. Roger Bacon.—There is one writer of the middle ages, on whom much stress has been laid, and who was certainly a most remarkable person. Roger Bacon’s works are not only so far beyond his age in the knowledge which they contain, but so different from the temper of the times, in his assertion of the supremacy of experiment, and in his contemplation of the future progress of knowledge, that it is difficult to conceive how such a character could then exist. That he received much of his knowledge from Arabic writers, there can be no doubt; for they were in his time the repositories of all traditionary knowledge. But that he derived from them his disposition to shake off the authority of Aristotle, to maintain the importance of experiment, and to look upon knowledge as in its infancy, I cannot believe, because I have not myself hit upon, nor seen quoted by others, any passages in which Arabian writers express such a disposition. On the other hand, we do find in European writers, in the authors of Greece and Rome, the solid sense, the bold and hopeful spirit, which suggest such tendencies. We have already seen that Aristotle asserts, as distinctly as words can express, that all knowledge must depend on observation, and that science must be collected from facts by induction. We have seen, too, that the Roman writers, and Seneca in particular, speak with an enthusiastic confidence of the progress which science must make in the course of ages. When Roger Bacon holds similar language in the thirteenth century, the resemblance is probably rather a sympathy of character, than a matter of direct derivation; but I know of nothing [246] which proves even so much as this sympathy in the case of Arabian philosophers.
A good deal has been said of late of the coincidences between his views, and those of his great namesake in later times, Francis Bacon.[91] The resemblances consist mainly in such points as I have just noticed; and we cannot but acknowledge, that many of the expressions of the Franciscan Friar remind us of the large thoughts and lofty phrases of the Philosophical Chancellor. How far the one can be considered as having anticipated the method of the other, we shall examine more advantageously, when we come to consider what the character and effect of Francis Bacon’s works really are.[92]
[91] Hallam’s Middle Ages, iii. 549. Forster’s Mahom. U. ii. 313.
[92] In the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, I have given an account at considerable length of Roger Bacon’s mode of treating Arts and Sciences; and have also compared more fully his philosophy with that of Francis Bacon; and I have given a view of the bearing of this latter upon the progress of Science in modern times. See Phil. Ind. Sc. book xii. chaps. 7 and 11. See also the [Appendix] to this volume.
5. Architecture of the Middle Ages.—But though we are thus compelled to disallow several of the claims which have been put forwards in support of the scientific character of the middle ages, there are two points in which we may, I conceive, really trace the progress of scientific ideas among them; and which, therefore, may be considered as the prelude to the period of discovery. I mean their practical architecture, and their architectural treatises.
In a previous [chapter] of this book, we have endeavored to explain how the indistinctness of ideas, which attended the decline of the Roman empire, appears in the forms of their architecture;—in the disregard, which the decorative construction exhibits, of the necessary mechanical conditions of support. The original scheme of Greek ornamental architecture had been horizontal masses resting on vertical columns: when the arch was introduced by the Romans, it was concealed, or kept in a state of subordination: and the lateral support which it required was supplied latently, marked by some artifice. But the struggle between the mechanical and the decorative construction[93] ended in the complete disorganization of the classical style. The [247] inconsistencies and extravagances of which we have noticed the occurrence, were results and indications of the fall of good architecture. The elements of the ancient system had lost all principle of connection and regard to rule. Building became not only a mere art, but an art exercised by masters without skill, and without feeling for real beauty.
[93] See Mr. Willis’s admirable Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, chap. ii.
Since the publication of my first edition, Mr. Willis has shown that much of the “mason-craft” of the middle ages consisted in the geometrical methods by which the artists wrought out of the blocks the complex forms of their decorative system.
To the general indistinctness of speculative notions on mechanical subjects prevalent in the middle ages, there may have been some exceptions, and especially so long as there were readers of Archimedes. Boëthius had translated the mechanical works of Archimedes into Latin, as we learn from the enumeration of his works by his friend Cassiodorus (Variar. lib i. cap. 45), “Mechanicum etiam Archimedem latialem siculis reddidisti.” But Mechanicus was used in those times rather for one skilled in the art of constructing wonderful machines than in the speculative theory of them. The letter from which the quotation is taken is sent by King Theodoric to Boëthius, to urge him to send the king a water-clock.