Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/300

28o A Short History of The World independent and well educated. The mind of the common man was awake in the world as it had never been before in all the experience of mankind. In spite of priest and persecution, Christianity does seem to have carried a mental ferment wherever its teaching reached. It established a direct relation between the conscience of the in- dividual man and the God of Righteousness, so that now if need arose he had the courage to form his own judgment upon prince or prelate or creed. As early as the eleventh century philosophical discussion had begun again in Europe, and there were great and growing univer- sities at Paris, Oxford, Bologna and other centres. There mediaeval " schoolmen " took up again and thrashed out a series of questions upon the value and meaning of words that were a necessary pre- liminary to clear thinking in the scientific age that was to follow. And standing by himself because of his distinctive genius was Roger Bacon (circa 1210 to circa 1293), a Franciscan of Oxford, the father of modern experimental science. His name deserves a prominence in our history second only to that of Aristotle. His writings are one long tirade against ignorance. He told his age it was ignorant, an incredibly bold thing to do. Nowadays a man may tell the world it is as silly as it is solemn, that all its methods are still infantile and clumsy and its dogmas childish assumptions, without much physical danger ; but these peoples of the middle ages when they were not actually being massacred or starving or dying of pestilence, were passionately convinced of the wisdom, the com- pleteness and finality of their beliefs, and disposed to resent any re- flections upon them very bitterly. Roger Bacon's writings were like a flash of light in a profound darkness. He combined his attack upon the ignorance of his times with a wealth of suggestion for the increase of knowledge. In his passionate insistence upon the need of experiment and of collecting knowledge, the spirit of Aristotle lives again in him. " Experiment, experiment," that is the burthen of Roger Bacon. Yet of Aristotle himself Roger Bacon fell foul. He fell foul of him because men, instead of facing facts boldly, sat in rooms and pored over the bad Latin translations which were then all that was avail- able of the master. " If I had my way " he wrote, in his intemper- ate fashion, " I should burn all the books of Aristotle, for the study of them can only lead to a loss of time, produce error, and increase ignorance," a sentiment that Aristotle would probably have echoed