Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/22

18 not find, as in those of other philosophers, secret matters only to be expounded after they are dead.' Avicenna explains the views of others and conceals his own, and avows that beside his published works he has written a treatise in which he has expounded philosophy 'according to Nature and Reason alone.' This was his Oriental Philosophy, now lost, if indeed it was ever current. On this declaration of Avicenna, Roger Bacon comments: "The naked truth cannot be told. Avicenna well knew that the envy and pride of his rivals, and the folly of the multitude forced him to speak like all the world in his published works, and he knew that he could only think the pure doctrine of Science for the few," The 'pure' doctrine of Avicenna was a pure pantheism—God was identified with the revolving spheres. Bacon expressly rejected this identification without ever knowing what Avicenna's last word was.

Students flocked to schools wherever the desired instruction was provided, as indeed, they always had done. In the sixth century 'Lismore's learned isle,' off the bleak Scottish coast of Oban, was visited by scholars from every part of Europe. In the twelfth, the Moorish universities held some students from countries as distant as England as well as many from Italy and France. To seek for the situations of the foci of learning in different centuries would be a curious inquiry. The excursion would extend from Turkistan to Tunis and Toledo.

Consider also the narrations of the voyages of travelers that began to be current. Benjamin of Tudela (1173) visited regions so distant as Samarkand and India. Jean Carpin, the Franciscan, was sent (1246) by Pope Innocent IV. on a mission to the Tartars, and Kubruquis (1253) to the same people by St. Louis. Marco Polo returned from China and India in 1295. Sir John Mandeville's travels in the orient (in the middle of the fourteenth century) were recorded by him in three languages and were copied everywhere in Europe. Consider, also, that well traveled trade routes existed throughout the nearer east and that the products of all the orient were familiar to the cities of Italy and southern France. The minds of men were opened by the recitals of the experiences of returning travelers. Abbey schools and great universities were everywhere to be found. The learning of the time was within the reach of multitudes.

What the mathematical courses in the English universities were, even in the sixteenth century, is illustrated by a curious passage from the Oxford lectures of Sir Henry Savile (1549-1622): "By the grace of God, gentlemen hearers, I have performed my promise; I have redeemed my pledge. I have explained, according to my ability the definitions, postulates, axioms and the first eight propositions of the Elements of Euclid"—eight propositions! Dante in the Convito gives the classic scheme of studies in European universities slightly modified