Page:The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe.djvu/26

18 Later in the same century stands forth the famous figure of Roger Bacon, the stout defender of mathematics and physics against scholasticism. Some have ascribed to him numerous important innovations in the realm of natural science and of the mechanical arts, and have regarded his promulgation of the experimental method, guided by the mathematical method, as the first herald note of that modern science which was not destined really to appear for yet several centuries. Yet he held that the alchemist, if given sufficient time and money, could discover a way not only to meet the state's expenses by converting baser metals into gold, but also to prolong human existence beyond that limit to which it can be drawn out by nature. Indeed these objects constituted two of the three examples he gave of the great advantages to be gained from the pursuit of that experimental science which was to disprove and blot out all magical nonsense.

How far Bacon let the principles of astrology carry him a citation or two will show. That a woman had succeeded in living twenty years without eating was, he explained, no miracle, but due to the fact that during that period some constellation was able to reduce the concourse of the four elements in her body to a greater degree of harmony than they usually attain. Nor is it health alone that the stars control; they affect human character. They implant in the babe at birth good or evil dispositions, great or small