Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860», страница 14

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera quaedam hactenus inedita. Vol. I, Containing, I. Opus Tertium,–II. Opus Minus,–III. Compendium Philosophiae. Edited by J.S. BREWER, M.A., Professor of English Literature, King's College, London, and Reader at the Rolls. Published by the Authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts. 1859. 8vo. pp. c., 573.

Sir John Romilly has shown good judgment in including the unpublished works of Roger Bacon in the series of "Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages," now in course of publication under his direction. They are in a true sense important memorials of the period at which they were written, and, though but incidentally illustrating the events of the time, they are of great value in indicating the condition of thought and learning as well as the modes of mental discipline and acquisition during the thirteenth century.

The memory of Roger Bacon has received but scant justice. Although long since recognized as one of the chief lights of England during the Middle Ages, the clinging mist of popular tradition has obscured his real brightness and distorted its proportions, while even among scholars he has been more known by reputation than by actual acquaintance with his writings. His principal work, his "Opus Majus," was published for the first time in London in 1733, in folio, and afterwards at Venice in 1750, in the same form. Down to the publication of the volume before us, it was the only one of his writings of much importance which had been printed complete, if indeed it is to be called complete,–the Seventh Part having been omitted by the editor, Dr. Jebb, and never having since been published.

The facts known concerning Roger Bacon's life are few, and are so intermingled with tradition that it is difficult wholly to separate them from it. Born of a good family at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, near the beginning of the thirteenth century, he was placed in early youth at Oxford, whence, after completing his studies in grammar and logic, "he proceeded to Paris," says Anthony Wood, "according to the fashion prevalent among English scholars of those times, especially among the members of the University of Oxford." Here, under the famous masters of the day, he devoted himself to study for some years, and made such progress that he received the degree of Doctor in Divinity. Returning to Oxford, he seems soon to have entered into the Franciscan Order, for the sake of securing a freedom from worldly cares, that he might the more exclusively give himself to his favorite pursuits. At various times he lectured at the University. He spent some later years out of England, probably again in Paris. His life was embittered by the suspicions felt in regard to his studies by the brethren of his order, and by their opposition, which proceeded to such lengths that it is said he was cast into prison, where, according to one report, he died wretchedly. However this may have been, his death took place before the beginning of the fourteenth century. The scientific and experimental studies which had brought him into ill-favor with his own order, and had excited the suspicion against him of dealing in magic and forbidden arts, seem to have sown the seed of the popular traditions which at once took root around his name. Friar Bacon soon became, and indeed has remained almost to the present day, a half-mythical character. To the imagination of the common people, he was a great necromancer; he had had dealings with the Evil One, who had revealed many of the secrets of Nature to him; he had made a head of brass that could speak and foretell future events; and to him were attributed other not less wonderful inventions, which seem to have formed a common stock for popular legends of this sort during the Middle Ages, and to have been ascribed indiscriminately to one philosopher or another in various countries and in various times.⁹ The references in our early literature to Friar Bacon, as one who had had familiarity with spirits and been a master in magic arts, are so numerous as to show that the belief in these stories was wide-spread, and that the real character of the learned Friar was quite given over to oblivion. But time slowly brings about its revenges; and the man whom his ignorant and stupid fellows thought fit to hamper and imprison, and whom popular credulity looked upon with that half-horror and half-admiration with which those were regarded who were supposed to have put their souls in pawn for the sake of tasting the forbidden fruit, is now recognized not only as one of the most profound and clearest thinkers of his time, but as the very first among its experimental philosophers, and as a prophet of truths which, then neglected and despised, have since been adopted as axioms in the progress of science. "The precursor of Galileo," says M. Hauréau, in his work on Scholastic Philosophy, "he learned before him how rash it is to offend the prejudices of the multitude, and to desire to give lessons to the ignorant."

The range of Roger Bacon's studies was encyclopedic, comprehending all the branches of learning then open to scholars. Brucker, in speaking of him in his History of Philosophy, has no words strong enough to express his admiration for his abilities and learning. "Seculi sui indolem multum superavit," "vir summus, tantaque occultioris philosophiae cognitione et experientia nobilis, ut merito Doctoris Mirabilis titulum reportaverit."¹⁰ The logical and metaphysical studies, in the intricate subtilties of which most of the schoolmen of his time involved themselves, presented less attraction to Bacon than the pursuits of physical science and the investigation of Nature. His genius, displaying the practical bent of his English mind, turning with weariness from the endless verbal discussions of the Nominalists and Realists, and recognizing the impossibility of solving the questions which divided the schools of Europe into two hostile camps, led him to the study of branches of knowledge that 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 in what may he called, without a sneer, the childishnesses of his time, childishnesses often combined with mature powers and profound thought. No age is fully conscious of its own intellectual disproportions; and what now seem mere puerilities in the works of the thinkers of the Middle Ages were perhaps frequently the result of as laborious effort and as patient study as what we still prize in them for its manly vigor and permanent worth. In a later age, the Centuries of the "Sylva Sylvarum" afford a curious comment on the Aphorisms of the "Novum Organum."

The "Opus Majus" of Bacon was undertaken in answer to a demand of Pope Clement IV. in 1266, and was intended to contain a review of the whole range of science, as then understood, with the exception of logic. Clement had apparently become personally acquainted with Bacon, at the time when, as legate of the preceding Pope, he had been sent to England on an ineffectual mission to compose the differences between Henry III. and his barons, and he appears to have formed a just opinion of the genius and learning of the philosopher.

The task to which Bacon had been set by the Papal mandate was rapidly accomplished, in spite of difficulties which might have overcome a less resolute spirit; but the work extended to such great length in his hands, that he seems to have felt a not unnatural fear that Clement, burdened with the innumerable cares of the Pontificate, would not find leisure for its perusal, much less for the study which some part of it demanded. With this fear, fearful also that portions of his work might be deficient in clearness, and dreading lest it might be lost on its way to Rome, he proceeded to compose a second treatise, called the "Opus Minus," to serve as an abstract and specimen of his greater work, and to embrace some additions to its matter. Unfortunately, but a fragment of this second work has been preserved, and this fragment is for the first time published in the volume just issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. But the "Opus Minus" was scarcely completed before he undertook a third work, to serve as an introduction and preamble to both the preceding. This has been handed down to us complete, and this, too, is for the first time printed in the volume before us. We take the account of it given by Professor Brewer, the editor, in his introduction.

 
"Inferior to its predecessors in the importance
of its scientific details and the illustration
it supplies of Bacon's philosophy, it is
more interesting than either, for the insight
it affords of his labors, and of the numerous
obstacles he had to contend with in the execution
of his work. The first twenty chapters
detail various anecdotes of Bacon's personal
history, his opinions on the state of
education, the impediments thrown in his
way by the ignorance, the prejudices, the
contempt, the carelessness, the indifference
of his contemporaries. From the twentieth
chapter to the close of the volume he pursues
the thread of the Opus Majus, supplying what
he had there omitted, correcting and explaining
what had been less clearly or correctly
expressed in that or in the Opus Minus. In
Chapter LII. he apologizes for diverging from
the strict line he had originally marked out,
by inserting in the ten preceding chapters his
opinions on three abstruse subjects, Vacuum,
Motion, and Space, mainly in regard to their
spiritual significance. 'As these questions,'
he says,' are very perplexing and difficult, I
thought I would record what I had to say
about them in some one of my works. In the
Opus Majus and Opus Minus I had not studied
them sufficiently to prevail on myself to
commit my thoughts about them to writing;
and I was glad to omit them, owing to the
length of those works, and because I was
much hurried in their composition.' From the
fifty-second chapter to the close of the volume
he adheres to his subject without further digression,
but with so much vigor of thought
and freshness of observations, that, like the
Opus Minus, the Opus Tertium may be fairly
considered an independent work."–pp.
xliv-xlv.¹³
 

The details which Bacon gives of his personal history are of special interest as throwing light upon the habits of life of a scholar in the thirteenth century. Their autobiographic charm is increased by their novelty, for they give a view of ways of life of which but few particulars have been handed down.

Excusing himself for the delay which had occurred, after the reception of the Pope's letter, before the transmission of the writings he had desired, Bacon says that he was strictly prohibited by a rule of his Order from communicating to others any writing made by one of its members, under penalty of loss of the book, and a diet for many days of bread and water. Moreover, a fair copy could not be made, supposing that he succeeded in writing, except by scribes outside of the Order; and they might transcribe either for themselves or others, and through their dishonesty it very often happened that books were divulged at Paris.

"Then other far greater causes of delay occurred, on account of which I was often ready to despair; and a hundred times I thought to give up the work I had undertaken; and, had it not been for reverence for the Vicar of the only Saviour, and [regard to] the profit to the world to be secured through him alone, I would not have proceeded, against these hindrances, with this affair, for all those who are in the Church of Christ, however much they might have prayed and urged me. The first hindrance was from those who were set over me, to whom you had written nothing in my favor, and who, since I could not reveal your secret [commission] to them, being bound not to do so by your command of secrecy, urged me with unutterable violence, and with other means, to obey their will. But I resisted, on account of the bond of your precept, which obliged me to your work, in spite of every mandate of my superiors....

"But I met also with another hindrance, which was enough to put a stop to the whole matter, and this was the want of [means to meet] the expense. For I was obliged to pay out in this business more than sixty livres of Paris,¹⁴ the account and reckoning of which I will set forth in their place hereafter. I do not wonder, indeed, that you did not think of these expenses, because, sitting at the top of the world, you have to think of so great and so many things that no one can estimate the cares of your mind. But the messengers who carried your letters were careless in not making mention to you of these expenses; and they were unwilling to expend a single penny, even though I told them that I would write to you an account of the expenses, and that to every one of them should be returned what was his. I truly have no money, as you know, nor can I have it, nor consequently can I borrow, since I have nothing wherewith to repay. I sent then to my rich brother, in my country, who, belonging to the party of the king, was exiled with my mother and my brothers and the whole family, and oftentimes being taken by the enemy redeemed himself with money, so that thus being ruined and impoverished, he could not assist me, nor even to this day have I had an answer from him.

"Considering, then, the reverence due to you, and the nature of your command, I solicited many and great people, the faces of some of whom you know well, but not their minds; and I told them that a certain affair of yours must he attended to by me in France, (but I did not disclose to them what it was,) the performance of which required a large sum of money. But how often I was deemed a cheat, how often repulsed, how often put off with empty hope, how often confused in myself, I cannot express. Even my friends did not believe me, because I could not explain to them the affair; and hence I could not advance by this way. In distress, therefore, beyond what can be imagined, I compelled serving-men and poor to expend all that they had, to sell many things, and to pawn others, often at usury; and I promised them that I would write to you every part of the expenses, and would in good faith obtain from you payment in full. And yet, on account of the poverty of these persons, I many times gave up the work, and many times despaired and neglected to proceed; and indeed, if I had known that you would not attend to the settling of these accounts, I would not for the whole world have gone on,–nay, rather, I would have gone to prison. Nor could I send special messengers to you for the needed sum, because I had no means. And I preferred to spend whatever I could procure in advancing the business rather than in despatching a messenger to you. And also, on account of the reverence due to you, I determined to make no report of expenses before sending to you something which might please you, and by ocular proof should give witness to its cost. On account, then, of all these things, so great a delay has occurred in this matter."¹⁵

There is a touching simplicity in this account of the trials by which he was beset, and it rises to dignity in connection with a sentence which immediately follows, in which he says, the thought of "the advantage of the world excited me, and the revival of knowledge, which now for many ages has lain dead, vehemently urged me forward." Motives such as these were truly needed to enable him to make head against such difficulties.

The work which he accomplished, remarkable as it is from its intrinsic qualities, is also surprising from the rapidity with which it was performed, in spite of the distractions and obstacles that attended it. It would seem that in less than two years from the date of Clement's letter, the three works composed in compliance with its demand were despatched to the Pope. Bacon's diligence must have been as great as his learning. In speaking, in another part of the "Opus Tertium," of the insufficiency of the common modes of instruction, he gives incidentally an account of his own devotion to study. "I have labored much," he says, "on the sciences and languages; it is now forty years since I first learned the alphabet, and I have always been studious; except two years of these forty, I have been always engaged in study; and I have expended much, [in learning,] as others generally do; but yet I am sure that within a quarter of a year, or half a year, I could teach orally, to a man eager and confident to learn, all that I know of the powers of the sciences and languages; provided only that I had previously composed a written compend. And yet it is known that no one else has worked so hard or on so many sciences and tongues; for men used to wonder formerly that I kept my life on account of my excessive labor, and ever since I have been as studious as I was then, but I have not worked so hard, because, through my practice in knowledge, it was not needful."¹⁶ Again he says, that in the twenty years in which he had specially labored in the study of wisdom, neglecting the notions of the crowd, he had spent more than two thousand pounds [livres] in the acquisition of secret books, and for various experiments, instruments, tables, and other things, as well as in seeking the friendship of learned men, and in instructing assistants in languages, figures, the use of instruments and tables, and many other things. But yet, though he had examined everything that was necessary for the construction of a preliminary work to serve as a guide to the wisdom of philosophy, though he knew how it was to be done, with what aids, and what were the hindrances to it, still he could not proceed with it, owing to the want of means. The cost of employing proper persons in the work, the rarity and costliness of books, the expense of instruments and of experiments, the need of infinite parchment and many scribes for rough copies, all put it beyond his power to accomplish. This was his excuse for the imperfection of the treatise which he had sent to the Pope, and this was a work worthy to be sustained by Papal aid.¹⁷

The enumeration by Bacon of the trials and difficulties of a scholar's life at a time when the means of communicating knowledge were difficult, when books were rare and to be obtained only at great cost, when the knowledge of the ancient languages was most imperfect, and many of the most precious works of ancient philosophy were not to be obtained or were to be found only in imperfect and erroneous translations, depicts a condition of things in vivid contrast to the present facilities for the communication and acquisition of learning, and enables us in some degree to estimate the drawbacks under which scholars prosecuted their studies before the invention of printing. That with such impediments they were able to effect so much is wonderful; and their claim on the gratitude and respect of their successors is heightened by the arduous nature of the difficulties with which they were forced to contend. The value of their work receives a high estimate, when we consider the scanty means with which it was performed.

Complaining of the want of books, Bacon says,–"The books on philosophy by Aristotle and Avicenna, by Seneca and Tully and others, cannot be had except at great cost, both because the chief of them are not translated into Latin, and because of others not a copy is to be found in public schools of learning or elsewhere. For instance, the most excellent books of Tully De Republica are nowhere to be found, so far as I can hear, and I have been eager in the search for them in various parts of the world and with various agents. It is the same with many other of his books. The books of Seneca also, the flowers of which I have copied out for your Beatitude, I was never able to find till about the time of your mandate, although I had been diligent in seeking for them for twenty years and more."¹⁸ Again, speaking of the corruption of translations, so that they are often unintelligible, as is especially the case with the books of Aristotle, he says that "there are not four Latins [that is, Western scholars] who know the grammar of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Arabians; for I am well acquainted with them, and have made diligent inquiry both here and beyond the sea, and have labored much in these things. There are many, indeed, who can speak Greek and Arabic and Hebrew, but scarcely any who know the principles of the grammar so as to teach it, for I have tried very many."¹⁹

In his treatise entitled "Compendium Studii Philosophiae," which is printed in this volume for the first time, he adds in relation to this subject,–"Teachers are not wanting, because there are Jews everywhere, and their tongue is the same in substance with the Arabic and the Chaldean, though they differ in mode.... Nor would it be much, for the sake of the great advantage of learning Greek, to go to Italy, where the clergy and the people in many places are purely Greek; moreover, bishops and archbishops and rich men and elders might send thither for books, and for one or for more persons who know Greek, as Lord Robert, the sainted Bishop of Lincoln,²⁰ did indeed do,–and some of those [whom he brought over] still survive in England."²¹ The ignorance of the most noted clerks and lecturers of his day is over and over again the subject of Bacon's indignant remonstrance. They were utterly unable to correct the mistakes with which the translations of ancient works were full. "The text is in great part horribly corrupt in the copy of the Vulgate at Paris, …and as many readers as there are, so many correctors, or rather corruptors, …for every reader changes the text according to his fancy."²² Even those who professed to translate new works of ancient learning were generally wholly unfit for the task. Hermann the German knew nothing of science, and little of Arabic, from which he professed to translate; but when he was in Spain, he kept Saracens with him who did the main part of the translations that he claimed. In like manner, Michael Scot asserted that he had made many translations; but the truth was, that a certain Jew named Andrew worked more than he upon them.²³ William Fleming was, however, the most ignorant and most presuming of all.²⁴ "Certain I am that it were better for the Latins that the wisdom of Aristotle had not been translated, than to have it thus perverted and obscured, …so that the more men study it the less they know, as I have experienced with all who have stuck to these books. Wherefore my Lord Robert of blessed memory altogether neglected them, and proceeded by his own experiments, and with other means, until he knew the things concerning which Aristotle treats a hundred thousand times better than he could ever have learned them from those perverse translations. And if I had power over these translations of Aristotle, I would have every copy of them burned; for to study them is only a loss of time and a cause of error and a multiplication of ignorance beyond telling. And since the labors of Aristotle are the foundation of all knowledge, no one can estimate the injury done by means of these bad translations."²⁵

Bacon had occasion for lamenting not only the character of the translations in use, but also the fact that many of the most important works of the ancients were not translated at all, and hence lay out of the reach of all but the rare scholars, like himself and his friend Grostête, who were able, through their acquaintance with the languages in which they were written, to make use of them, provided manuscripts could be found for reading. "We have few useful works on philosophy in Latin. Aristotle composed a thousand volumes, as we read in his Life, and of these we have but three of any notable size, namely,–on Logic, Natural History, and Metaphysics; so that all the other scientific works that he composed are wanting to the Latins, except some tractates and small little books, and of these but very few. Of his Logic two of the best books are deficient, which Hermann had in Arabic, but did not venture to translate. One of them, indeed, he did translate, or caused to be translated, but so ill that the translation is of no sort of value and has never come into use. Aristotle wrote fifty excellent books about Animals, as Pliny says in the eighth book of his Natural History, and I have seen them in Greek, and of these the Latins have only nineteen wretchedly imperfect little books. Of his Metaphysics the Latins read only the ten books which they have, while there are many more; and of these ten which they read, many chapters are wanting in the translation, and almost infinite lines. Indeed, the Latins have nothing worthy; and therefore it is necessary that they should know the languages, for the sake of translating those things that are deficient and needful. For, moreover, of the works on secret sciences, in which the secrets and marvels of Nature are explored, they have little except fragments here and there, which scarcely suffice to excite the very wisest to study and experiment and to inquire by themselves after those things which are lacking to the dignity of wisdom; while the crowd of students are not moved to any worthy undertaking, and grow so languid and asinine over these ill translations, that they lose utterly their time and study and expense. They are held, indeed, by appearances alone; for they do not care what they know, but what they seem to know to the silly multitude."²⁶

These passages may serve to show something of the nature of those external hindrances to knowledge with which Bacon himself had had to strive, which he overcame, and which he set himself with all his force to break down, that they might no longer obstruct the path of study. What scholar, what lover of learning, can now picture to himself such efforts without emotion,–without an almost oppressive sense of the contrast between the wealth of his own opportunities and the penury of the earlier scholar? On the shelves within reach of his hand lie the accumulated riches of time. Compare our libraries, with their crowded volumes of ancient and modern learning, with the bare cell of the solitary Friar, in which, in a single small cupboard, are laid away a few imperfect manuscripts, precious as a king's ransom, which it had been the labor of years to collect. This very volume of his works, a noble monument of patient labor, of careful investigation, of deep thought, costs us but a trivial sum; while its author, in his poverty, was scarcely able, without begging, to pay for the parchment upon which he wrote it, as, uncheered by the anticipation that centuries after his death men would prize the works he painfully accomplished, he leaned against his empty desk, half-discouraged by the difficulties that beset him. All honor to him! honor to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages! to the men who kept the traditions of wisdom alive, who trimmed the wick of the lamp of learning when its flame was flickering, and who, when its light grew dim and seemed to be dying out, supplied it with oil hardly squeezed by their own hands, drop by drop, from the scanty olives which they had gathered from the eternal tree of Truth! In these later days learning has become cheap. What sort of scholar must he now be, who should be worthy to be put into comparison with the philosopher of the thirteenth century?

The general scheme of Bacon's system of philosophy was at once simple and comprehensive. The scope of his thought had a breadth uncommon in his or in any time. In his view, the object of all philosophy and human learning was to enable men to attain to the wisdom of God; and to this end it was to be subservient absolutely, and relatively so far as regarded the Church, the government of the state, the conversion of infidels, and the repression of those who could not be converted. All wisdom was included in the Sacred Scriptures, if properly understood and explained. "I believe," said he, "that the perfection of philosophy is to raise it to the state of a Christian law." Wisdom was the gift of God, and as such it included the knowledge of all things in heaven and earth, the knowledge of God himself, of the teachings of Christ, the beauty of virtue, the honesty of laws, the eternal life of glory and of punishment, the resurrection of the dead, and all things else.²⁷