were held in little repute. He recognized the
place of mathematics as the basis of exact science, and proceeded to the
investigation of the facts and laws of optics, mechanics, chemistry, and
astronomy. But he did not limit himself to positive science; he was at
the same time a student of languages and of language, of grammar and of
music. He was versed not less in the arts of the _Trivium_ than in the
sciences of the Quadrivium.[11]

But in rejecting the method of study then in vogue, and in opposing the
study of facts to that of questions which by their abstruseness fatigued
the intellect, which were of more worth in sharpening the wit than in
extending the limits of knowledge, and which led rather to vain
contentions than to settled conclusions,--in thus turning from the
investigation of abstract metaphysics to the study of Nature, Roger
Bacon went so far before his age as to condemn himself to solitude, to
misappreciation, and to posthumous neglect. Unlike men of far narrower
minds, but more conformed to the spirit of the times, he founded no
school, and left no disciples to carry out the system which he had
advanced, and which was one day to have its triumph. At the end of the
thirteenth century the scholastic method was far from having run its
career. The minds of men were occupied with problems which it alone
seemed to be able to resolve, and they would not abandon it at the will
of the first innovator. The questions in dispute were embittered by
personal feeling and party animosities. Franciscans and Dominicans were
divided by points of logic not less than by the rules of their
orders.[12] Ignorance and passion alike gave ardor to discussion, and it
was vain to attempt to convince the heated partisans on one side or the
other, that the truths they sought were beyond the reach of human
faculties, and that their dialectics and metaphysics served to bewilder
more than to enlighten the intellect. The disciples of subtile
speculatists like Aquinas, or of fervent mystics like Bonaventura, were
not likely to recognize the worth and importance of the slow processes
of experimental philosophy.

The qualities of natural things, the limits of intellectual powers, the
relations of man to the universe, the conditions of matter and spirit,
the laws of thought, were too imperfectly understood for any man to
attain to a comprehensive and correct view of the sources and methods of
study and discovery of the truth. Bacon shared