among the Latins who had any reputation for knowledge. I have caused youths to be instructed in languages, geometry, arithmetic, the construction of tables and instruments, and many needful things besides." So long as his means allowed, he spared no expense in the procuring of books and instruments. Yet the difficulties in his way were so many and so great that any other man would have considered them insurmountable.

"The scientific works of Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Seneca, of Cicero, and of other ancients," he writes, "cannot be had without great cost; their principal works have not been translated into Latin, and copies of others are not to be found in ordinary libraries or elsewhere. The admirable books of Cicero de Republica are not to be found anywhere, so far as I can hear, though I have made anxious inquiry for them in different parts of the world, and by various messengers. I could never find the works of Seneca, though I made diligent search for them during twenty years or more. And so it is with many more

useful books connected with the science of morals. Without mathematical instruments, no science can be mastered, and these instruments are not to be found among the Latins, nor could they be made for two or three hundred pounds."

Such words not only illustrate the character of the obstacles at that time opposed to learning, but they portray the indomitable energy, patience, and perseverance of the man who, in spite of such difficulties, and without hope of reward, spent his whole life in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. After some years spent abroad, Bacon returned to Oxford. Having neither money nor the influence of patrons to assist him in the prosecution. of his plans, he was finally induced by Bishop Grossteste, of Lincoln, to renounce the world and all its ambitions, and to become a friar of the order of St. Francis. He had as yet written but little, and the order of monks to which he, attached himself prided itself upon its opposition tɔ

books and learning, and regarded study as a hinderance to the legitimate work of the brotherhood. But "some few chapters on different subjects written at the entreaty of friends" had already gotten abroad, and, by the merest chance, had fallen into the hands of Pope Clement IV. Pleased with the learning displayed in these chapters, and desiring to read more on the same subjects, the pope sent Raymond de Loudun to Oxford with a message to the monk Bacon, bidding him so far to disregard the rules of his order as to write, for his personal perusal, whatsoever might be deemed desirable and proper. When Bacon received this mandate, he was anxious to comply. But a serious and seemingly insurmountable difficulty presented itself. The writing which he had long before contemplated, and which he still considered "desirable and proper," could not be done without great expense. The parchment and other materials necessary for the work would cost not less than sixty pounds. How should one who had bound himself by vows of poverty, and who was a member of an order possessing neither money nor property, hope to defray the expenses necessarily to be incurred by such an undertaking? The natural supposition would be that the pope, for whose benefit the work was to be done, would assist the penniless monk; but this was not the case. The pope had not made any promises. Bacon's relatives could afford him no help, for they were as poor as he. At length, however, his friends succeeded in raising the necessary funds by pawning their own goods, it being understood that the pope should be asked to repay them or to secure them from loss.

As soon as the required materials had been procured, Friar Bacon commenced his task; and so zealously did he prosecute his work that, within fifteen months from the time that he first set pen to paper, three books were written and forwarded to Rome. These books were the Opus Majus -a ponderous folio even in its printed form-and two smaller supplementary works, the Opus Minus and the

Opus Tertium. It is not known how they were received by Pope Clement, nor with what degree of favor they were regarded, for his death occurred very soon afterwards, probably even before he could examine them. This was in the year 1268.

The Opus Majus, although written in great haste and marred by many defects of style and language, was, without doubt, the most scholarly work produced in any country during the Middle Ages. It was, as Dr. Whewell remarks, at once the encyclopædia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century. It embraced in its scheme. a notice and discussion of every branch of knowledge then existing, grammar, philology, mathematics, experimental philosophy, geography, arithmetic, music, astronomy, etc. In regard to the study of these branches, and the modes of reasoning at that time practiced, the friar urges the necessity of reform. He declares that the neglect of mathematics and the physical sciences "hath nearly destroyed the entire studies of Latin Christendom. For he who knows not mathematics cannot know any other sciences; and what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedies."

He asserts that there are four reasons why knowledge has not made greater progress: first, a too implicit faith in the traditions of the past, together with the too general trust in authority; second, the power of habit and the naturally conservative instincts of men; third, the power of blind prejudices and popular opinions; fourth, the hiding of one's own ignorance under the cloak of selfsatisfied and superficial wisdom. He argues, further, that experiment is the true basis of all scientific knowledge,. and that reason alone should be the master of our actions. Roger Bacon, although strangely credulous regarding the superstitions of a superstitious age, was a man of extraordinary reasoning powers. The scope of his work, the whole tenor of his studies and investigations, were those of a man living out of his own time. Not till three cen

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turies afterwards was the world prepared to receive the work of a true philosopher and investigator, and to be profited and enlightened by it. Unheard, forgotten, buried, the old man died as he had lived; and it has been reserved for later ages to roll away the obscurity that had gathered round his memory, and to place first in the great roll of modern science the name of Roger Bacon."

The present chapter would be incomplete without some notice of the theologians and schoolmen whose writings formed so peculiar a feature and so large a proportion of the prose literature of the Transition Period. The scholastic philosophy, as Hallam remarks, "was, in its general principles, an alliance between faith and reason; an endeavor to arrange the orthodox system of the church, such as authority had made it, according to the rules and methods of the Aristotelian dialectics, and sometimes upon premises supplied by metaphysical reasoning. . . . The principle of the schoolmen in their investigations was the expanding, developing, and, if possible, illustrating and clearing from objection, the doctrines of natural and revealed religion in a dialectical method and by dint of the subtlest reasoning. The questions which we deem altogether metaphysical, such as that concerning universal ideas, became theological in their hands. They were, in general, prudent enough not to defy the censures of the church; yet there was, as might be expected from the circumstances, a great deal of real deviation from orthodoxy, and even of infidelity. The scholastic mode of dispute, admitting of no termination and producing no conviction, was the sure cause of skepticism. Yet, upon a general consideration, the attention paid in the universities to scholastic philosophy may be deemed a source of improvement in the intellectual character, when we compare it with the perfect ignorance of some preceding ages. Whether the same industry would not have been more profitably directed, if the love of metaphysics had not intervened, is another question."

John Scotus Erigena has sometimes been mentioned as the founder of the scholastic philosophy. It is no doubt true that the mystical philosophy of the Neo-Platonists was revived by him, and that, in some of his writings, he had recourse to arguments similar to those afterwards employed by the schoolmen. But since for two centuries after his death the doctrines of Erigena were almost totally forgotten, to be revived only by some of the later scholastics, it seems more proper to ascribe the founding of this philosophy in England to Anselm, the famous Archbishop of Canterbury in the time of William Rufus.

Anselm ranks among the ablest, as well as among the most worthy, of English ecclesiastics. On account of the excellence of his learning and the soundness of his arguments in defense of religion and the church, he has sometimes been called the "Augustine of the Middle Ages." He was a native of Italy, but was educated at the monastery of Bec, in Normandy, of which, in 1078, he became abbot. In 1092, upon the death of Lanfranc, he was called to the archbishopric of Canterbury. While merely a monk and serving in the capacity of teacher at the monastery of Bec, he was noted for the wisdom of his methods, the gentleness of his discipline, his steadiness of purpose, and his discriminating liberality. "Did you ever see," said he, "a craftsman fashion a fair image out of a golden plate by blows alone? Does he not now gently press it and strike it with his tools, now with wise art yet more gently raise and shape it? What will your scholars turn into under ceaseless beating? Brutes." The characteristics which distinguished him in the lower walks of life followed him into the higher. The story of his struggles with William Rufus and with Henry I. in defense of the church against the pretentious claims of royalty, is well known to the reader of English history. Anselm's most famous works were two Latin treatises, De Concordia Prædestinationibus and Cur Deus Homo, both relating to the subject of the atonement. They are the