or him was the Vicar of CHRIST, whom
he wished to see reign over the whole world, not by force of arms,
but by the assimilation of all that was worthy in that world. To his
mind--and here he was certainly a child of his age, in its best sense,
perhaps--all other sciences were handmaidens to theology, queen of
them all. All were to be subservient to her aims: the Church he called
"Catholic" was to embrace in her arms all that was worthy in the works
of "profane" writers--true prophets of God, he held, in so far as
writing worthily they unconsciously bore testimony to the truth of
Christianity,--and all that Nature might yield by patient experiment and
speculation guided by mathematics. Some minds see in this a defect in
his system, which limited his aims and outlook; others see it as the
unifying principle giving coherence to the whole. At any rate, the
Church, as we have seen, regarded his views as dangerous, and restrained
his pen for at least a considerable portion of his life.

ROGER BACON may seem egotistic in argument, but his mind was humble to
learn. He was not superstitious, but he would listen to common folk who
worked with their hands, to astrologers, and even magicians, denying
nothing which seemed to him to have some evidence in experience: if he
denied much of magical belief, it was because he found it lacking in
such evidence. He often went astray in his views; he sometimes failed
to apply his own method, and that method was, in any case, primitive and
crude. But it was the RIGHT method, in embryo at least, and ROGER BACON,
in spite of tremendous opposition, greater than that under which any man
of science may now suffer, persisted in that method to the end, calling
upon his contemporaries to adopt it as the only one which results in
right knowledge. Across the centuries--or, rather, across the gulf that
divides this world from the next--let us salute this great and noble
spirit.

XII. THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS

THERE is an opinion, unfortunately very common, that religious mysticism
is a product of the emotional temperament, and is diametrically opposed
to the spirit of rationalism. No doubt this opinion is not without some
element of justification, and one could quote the works of not a few
religious mystics to the effect that self-surrender to God implies, not
merely a giving up of will, but also of reason. But that this teaching
is not an essential element in mysticism, that it is, indeed, rathe