Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/157

Rh inventions of clocks, lenses, and the formula for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth were brought to light. Bitterly attacked by the clergy, he attempted to defend himself by stating that much which was ascribed to demons resulted from natural means. This statement but added fuel to the flame. For in 1278, the authorities of the Franciscan Order assembled at Paris, solemnly condemned Bacon's teachings, and the general of the Franciscans, Jerome of Ascoli, afterwards Pope, threw him into prison, where he remained for fourteen years. At the age of eighty, he was released from prison declaring, "Would that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of science."

"Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world had ecclesiasticism allowed the gift. He held the key to treasures which would have freed mankind- from ages of error and misery. With his discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done to this age also. Thousands of precious lives shall be lost, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privations, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken dealing with Roger Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth." (White: "Warfare of Science.")

Centuries afterwards, for stating the same claim, namely, that much which was attributed to demons, resulted from natural causes, Cornelius Agrippa, Weyer, Flade, Loos, Bekker, and a multitude of other investigators and thinkers, suffered confiscation of property, loss of position, and even torture and death.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, John Baptist Porta, who was the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides and thus laid the foundation of several