r, the latter despised mathematics,
and it was not until in quite recent years that the scientific world
came to realise that ROGER'S method is the more fruitful--witness the
modern revolution in chemistry produced by the adoption of mathematical
methods.

ROGER BACON, it may be said, was many centuries in advance of his time;
but it is equally true that he was the child of his time; this may
account for his defects judged by modern standards. He owed not a little
to his contemporaries: for his knowledge and high estimate of philosophy
he was largely indebted to his Oxford master GROSSETESTE (_c_.
1175-1253), whilst PETER PEREGRINUS, his friend at Paris, fostered his
love of experiment, and the Arab mathematicians, whose works he knew,
inclined his mind to mathematical studies. He was violently opposed to
the scholastic views current in Paris at his time, and attacked great
thinkers like THOMAS AQUINAS (_c_. 1225-1274) and ALBERTUS MAGNUS
(1193-1280), as well as obscurantists, such as ALEXANDER of HALES (_ob_.
1245). But he himself was a scholastic philosopher, though of no servile
type, taking part in scholastic arguments. If he declared that he would
have all the works of ARISTOTLE burned, it was not because he hated
the Peripatetic's philosophy--though he could criticise as well as
appreciate at times,--but because of the rottenness of the translations
that were then used. It seems commonplace now, but it was a truly
wonderful thing then: ROGER BACON believed in accuracy, and was by no
means destitute of literary ethics. He believed in correct translation,
correct quotation, and the acknowledgment of the sources of one's
quotations--unheard-of things, almost, in those days. But even he was
not free from all the vices of his age: in spite of his insistence upon
experimental verification of the conclusions of deductive reasoning,
in one place, at least, he adopts a view concerning lenses from another
writer, of which the simplest attempt at such verification would have
revealed the falsity. For such lapses, however, we can make allowances.

Another and undeniable claim to greatness rests on ROGER BACON'S
broad-mindedness. He could actually value at their true worth the moral
philosophies of non-Christian writers--SENECA (_c_. 5 B.C.-A.D. 65) and
AL GHAZZALI (1058-1111), for instance. But if he was catholic in the
original meaning of that term, he was also catholic in its restricted
sense. He was no heretic: the Pope f