of superficial knowledge." These reasons
contain the very essence of the experimental method, and continue to
be as important in the twentieth century as they were in the
thirteenth. They could only have emanated from an eminently practical
mind, accustomed to test by observation and by careful searching of
authorities every proposition that came to him.

It is very evident that modern scientists would have more of kinship
and intellectual sympathy with Friar {291} Bacon than most of them are
apt to think possible. A faithful student of his writings, who was at
the same time in many ways a cordial admirer of medievalism, the late
Professor Henry Morley, who held the chair of English literature at
University College, London, whose contributions to the History of
English Literature are probably the most important of the nineteenth
century, has a striking paragraph with regard to this attitude of
Bacon toward knowledge and science--two words that have the same
meaning etymologically, though they have come to have quite different
connotations. In the third volume of his English Writers, page 321,
Professor Morley, after quoting Bacon's four grounds of human
ignorance, said:--

"No part of that ground has yet been cut away from beneath the feet
of students, although six centuries ago the Oxford friar clearly
pointed out its character. We still make sheep walks of second,
third and fourth and fiftieth-hand references to authority; still we
are the slaves of habit; still we are found following too frequently
the untaught crowd; still we flinch from the righteous and wholesome
phrase, 'I do not know,' and acquiesce actively in the opinion of
others, that we know what we appear to know. Substitute honest
research, original and independent thought, strict truth in the
comparison of only what we really know with what is really known by
others, and the strong redoubt of ignorance is fallen."

This attitude of mind of Friar Bacon toward the reasons for ignorance,
is so different from what is usually predicated of the Middle Ages and
of medieval scholars, that it seems worth while insisting on it.
Authority is supposed to have meant everything for the scholastics,
{292} and experiment is usually said to have counted for nothing. They
are supposed to have been accustomed to swear to the words of the
master--"_jurare in verba magistri_"--yet here is a great leader of
medieval thought insisting on just the oppos