things that we do, but
to say either that they lacked powers of observation, or did not use
their powers or failed to appreciate the value of such powers, is
simply a display of ignorance of what they actually did.

On the other hand, when it comes to the question of the principles of
experimental science and the value they placed on them, these men of
the medieval universities, when sympathetically studied, prove to have
been quite as sensible as the scientists of our own time. The idea
that Francis Bacon in any way laid the foundation of the experimental
sciences, or indeed did anything more than give a literary statement
of the philosophy of the experimental science, though he himself
proved utterly unable to apply the principles that he discussed to the
scientific discoveries of his own time, is one of the inexplicable
absurdities of history that somehow get in and {301} cannot be got
out. The great thinkers of the medieval period had not only reached
the same conclusions as he did, but actually applied them three
centuries before; and the great medieval universities were occupied
with problems, even in physical science, not very different from those
which have given food for thought for subsequent generations. We shall
see in the next chapter how successfully they applied these great
principles of the experimental method, and how much they anticipated
many phases of science that we are apt to think of as distinctly
modern.

{302}

CHURCHMEN AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE AT THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES.

There can be no doubt at all in the minds of those who know anything
about the early history of the universities, but that the Popes were
entirely favorable to the great educational movement represented by
these institutions. It is ordinarily supposed, however, that the
medieval universities limited their attention to philosophy and
theology, and that even these subjects were studied from such narrow
religious standpoints, as to make them of very little value for the
development of human knowledge or the evolution of the human mind. Any
such supposition is the result of ignorance on the part of those who
entertain it, as to the actual curriculum of studies at the early
universities, though it is not surprising that it should be very
common, because, unfortunately, it has been fostered by many writers
on educational subjects, especially in English. Scholasticism is often
said to have been the very acme of absurdity in t