Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/569

 ROGER BACON. 553 ure to elucidate questions is stigmatized as whimsical, and is not listened to. Worse than all, the text of the Vulgate is horribly corrupt, and where not corrupt it is doubtful, owing to the igno- rance of would-be correctors and their presumption, for every one deemed himself able to correct the text, though he would not venture to alter a word in a poet. First of moderns, Bacon dis- cerned the importance of etymology and of comparative philolo- gy, and he exposed unsparingly the wretched blunders customary among the so-called learned, who only succeeded in leading their pupils into error. Bacon's methods were strictly scientific. He wanted facts, actual facts, as a basis for all reasoning, whether on dogma or physical and mental experiences. To him all study of nature or of man was empirical ; to know first, and then to rea- son. Mathematics was first in the order of sciences ; then meta- physics ; and to him metaphysics was not a barren effort to frame a system on postulates assumed at caprice and built up on dialec- tical sophisms, but a solid series of deductions from ascertained ob- servations, for, according to Avicenna, " the conclusions of other sciences are the principles of metaphysics." * The vast labors of the earnest life of a great genius were lost to a world too conceited of its petty vanities to recognize how far he was in advance of it. It was enamored of words ; he dealt in things : the actual was rejected for the unsubstantial, and an intel- lectual revolution of priceless value to mankind was stifled in its inception. It was as though Caliban should chain Prospero and cast him into the ocean. How completely Bacon was unappreciated by an age unable to understand him and his antagonism towards its methods is evidenced by the scarcity of manuscripts of his works, the fragmentary condition of some of them, and the utter disap- pearance of others. " It is easier," says Leland, " to collect the leaves of the Sibyl than the titles of the works of Roger Bacon." The same evidence is furnished by the absence of detail as to his life no less than by the vulgar stories of his proficiency in magic arts. Even the tragic incident of his imprisonment by his Franciscan superiors and the prohibition to pursue his studies is so obscure that it is told in contradictory fashion, and its truth has been not Brewer, Preface, p. li.
 * Op. Minus, M. R. Series I. 326-30. — Compend. Studii Philosoph. vn.—