Roger Bacon : essays contributed by various writers on the occasion of the commemoration of the seventh centenary of his birth / collected and edited by A.G. Little.
- Date:
- 1914
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Roger Bacon : essays contributed by various writers on the occasion of the commemoration of the seventh centenary of his birth / collected and edited by A.G. Little. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![has a true savant's contempt for the profanum vulgus. “ Whatever ”, he stoutly declares, “ seems true to the many, must necessarily be false.” The common people, however, are not guilty of the fourth fault, concealment of ignorance and assumption of knowledge ; that is the peculiar property of the learned professors. . . . ‘ On the whole, then, in this first part we can see Bacon deliberately rejecting the whole spirit and method of scholasticism. He has said himself off from contemporary philosophy, and now proceeds to evolve the system of knowledge which ought to be substituted for it. ‘ Before beginning his task he has to come to terms with the great scholastic study, Theology ; this he does in the Second Part of his work. It is not very easy for us to realize Bacon’s position with regard to the question of the relation between Philosophy and Theology. He does not seem to have entered with much earnestness on the matter, and sometimes he is a little inconsistent. He takes up the usual position that all knowledge is revealed in the Scriptures, but is there only implicitly, and thus philosophy has a place alongside of theology as its exponent. “ The end of ail true philosophy”, says he, “ is to arrive at a knowledge of the Creator through knowledge of the created world.” A better definition has seldom been given. Theology, further, has need of philosophy to prove its principles, otherwise infidels, who do not accept the Scriptures, could never be convinced of the truth of the Christian faith. There is much in this proposition that requires more careful handling than Bacon has given. Evidently, however, the problem is not one of the highest interest for him. ‘ Part III. The third part of the Opus lays the first stone of the new building. In order to obtain real know- ledge we must study what Bacon calls Grammar, what we should call Philology, for Bacon has a wide idea of Grammar. In particular the Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic languages must be mastered, for the Scriptures and the best philosophical works are written in these tongues. There were translations no doubt ; the Bible has been translated, Aristotle had been translated. But Bacon never wearied in pointing out how miserably defective these translations were.1 Of Aristotle, in especial, he declared that if he had the power he would burn every book, so miserable had been 1 [Bacon certainly exaggerated the badness of the later translations : ■cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant (2nd ed.), i. 40. A. G. L.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28993949_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
