The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

sion as: "The teachers were mainly engaged in metaphysical speculations and the students were occupied with exercises in logic and in dia

the time-taking public exercises in dialectics, the fine hair-drawn distinctions presumably with but the scantiest basis of truth behind them and in general the placing of words for realities in the investigation of truth and the con

ation. Dialectics may seem to be a waste of time to those who consider the training of the human mind as of little value in comparison with the stocking of it with information. Dialectical training will probably not often enable men to earn more money than might have otherwise been the case. This will be {34} eminently true if the dialectician is to devote himself to commercial enterprises in his future life

influence in mere language, in mere system of arrangement and expression, must be considered as one of the great benefits of Scholasticism." This is, after all, only a similar opinion to that evidently entertained by Mr. John Stuart Mill, who, as Prof. Saintsbury says, was not often a scholastically-minded philosopher, for he quotes in the preface of his logic two very striking opinions from very different sources, the Scotch philosopher, Hamilton, and the French philosophical writer, Condorcet. Hamilton said, "It is to the schoolmen that the vulgar languages are indebted for what precision and analytical subtlety they possess." C

terest at the present time. Besides the standards set up and the tests required can scarcely fail to attract attention. Professor Turner, in his History of Philosophy, has summed up much of what

rred to the year 1232, we find the following works among those prescribed for the Faculty of Arts: Logica Vetus (the old Boethian text of a portion of the Organon, probably accompanied by Porphyry's Isagoge); Logica Nova (the new translation of the Organon); Gilbert's Liber Sex Principorium; and Donatu

ning, the bachelor resumed his studies for the licentiate, assuming also the task of cursorily explaining to junior students some portion of the Organon. The test for the degree of licentiate consisted {36} in a collatio, or exposition of several texts, after the manner of the masters. The student was now a licensed teacher; he did not, however, become magister, or master of arts, until he had delivered what was called the inceptio, or inaugural lecture, an

too frequently fail to realize. With regard to this the same distinguished authority whom we quoted with regard to dialectics, Prof. Saintsbury, does not hesitate to use expressions

ho, whatever they were, were thorough, and whatever they could not do, could think. And there, have even, in these latter days, been some graceless ones who have asked whether the Science of the nin

and the relation of things physical to one another, which we now include under the name science, some of the thoughts that these scholars of the Thirteenth Century were thinking and were developing for the ben

etch of Petrus Peregrinus, condenses the references to magnetic phenomena that are found in the literature of the time. Most of the writers he mentions were not scientists in the ordinary sense of the word but were literary men, and the fact that these references occur shows very c

erent kinds of natural magnets and states some of the properties commonly attributed to them; the minstrel, Guyot de Provins, in a famous satirical poem, written about 1208, refers to the directive quality of the lodestone and its use in navigation, as do also Cardinal de Vitry in his Historia Orientialis (1215-1220

gnet, A. D. 1269, translated by Bro. Arnold, M. Sc., w

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serve no further attention. We have presumably, learned so much by experimental demonstration and original observation in the physical sciences, that any thinking of the medieval mind along these lines may, in the opinion of those who know nothing of what they speak, be set aside as preposterous, or at best nugatory. It will surely be a source of surprise, then, to find that in the consideration of the composition of matte

of lectures given at the University of Paris toward the end of the third quarter of the Thirteenth Century, stated as the most important conclusion with regard to matter, that "Nihil omnino in nihilum redigetur,"' "Nothing at all will ever be reduced to nothingness." By this it was very evident from the context that he meant tha

care were taken in the collection of the gases that came off under these circumstances, of the ashes of combustion and of the residue of evaporation, all the original material that had been contained in the supposedly disappearing substance could be recovered or at least completely accounted for. The physicists on their part had realized this same truth and finally there came the definite enunciation of the absolute indestructibility of

troyed as well as no matter would ever be annihilated. He was teaching the conservation of energy as well as the indestructibility of matter. Here once more the experimental demonstration of the doctrine was delayed for over six centuries and a half. The truth itself, however, had been reached by this medieval master-mind and was the subject of his teaching to the university students in Paris in the Thirteenth C

this theory of the constitution of matter very clearly in recent years, and in doing so has only been voicing the practically universal sentiment of those who have been following the latest developments in the physical sciences. Strange as it may appear, this was exactly the teaching of Aquinas and the schoolmen with regard to the constitution of matter. They said that the two constituting principles of matter were prime matter and form. By prime matter they meant the material sub-stratum the same in all material things. By form they meant the special dynamic energy which, entering into prime matter, causes it to act differently from other kinds and gives it all the particular qualities by which we recognize it. This theory was not original with them, having been adopted from Aristotle, but it was ve

It might well he responded to this, that it is not the function of a university to teach applications of science but only the great principles, the broad generalizations that underlie scientific thinking, leaving details to be filled in in whatever form of practical work the man may take up. Very few of those, however, who talk about the purely speculative character of medie

nfidence in the opinion of the inexperienced; and fourth, the hiding of one's own ignorance with the parade of a superficial wisdom." Surely no one will ever be able to improve on these four grounds for human ignorance, and they continue to be as {42} 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. Professor Henry Morley, Professor of English Literature at University College, London, says of these grounds for ignorance of Roger Bacon, in his English Writers, Volume III, page 321: "No part of that grou

, but this is a mistake since it was known many years before by the Arabs and by them introduced into Europe. He did study explosives very deeply, however, and besides learning many things about them realized how much might be accomplished by their use in the after-time. He declares in his Opus Magnum: "That one may cause to burst forth from bronze, thunderbolts

pp

S (TANG

ontrol of man and be harnessed by him for his own purposes. He realized that one of the great applications of such a force would be for transportation. Accordingly he said: "Art can construct instruments of navigation such that the largest vessels governed by a single man will traverse rivers and seas more rapidly than if they were filled with oarsmen. On

m's Dante and Catholic Philosophy, published by th

sh them on a mathematical basis. His traditional connection with the telescope can probably be traced to the fact that he was very much interested in astronomy and the relations of the heavens to the earth. He pointed out very clearly the errors which had crept into the Julian calendar, calculated exactly how much of a correction was needed in order to restore the

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ite rate of motion, though this was extremely rapid. It is rather difficult to understand how he reached this conclusion since light travels so fast that as far as regards any observation that can be made upon earth, the diffusion is practically instantaneous. It was not for over three centuries later that R?

raise, however, are so different from those which are ordinarily proclaimed to have been the sources of laudation in distant medieval scientific circles, that we prefer to quote Bacon's own words from the Opus Tertium. Bacon is talking of Petrus Peregrinus and says: "I know of only one person who deserves praise for his work in experimental philosophy, for he does not care for th

in hunting, besides which he is skilled in agriculture and in the measurement of lands. {45} It is impossible to write a useful or correct treatise in experimental philosophy withou

pp

DRAL

RAL (H

men of the period, it seems well to quote an expression of opinion from the modern historian of the inductive sciences, whose praise is scarcely if any less outspoken than that of others whom we have quoted and who might be

not made a greater progress, to draw back attention to the sources of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet almost untouched, and to animate men in the undertaking by a prospect of the vast advantages which it offered. In the development of this plan all the leading portions of science are expanded in the most complete shape which they had at th

h he was more concerned with the study of chemical problems than of the practical questions which were to occupy his greatest pupil. There is no doubt at all that Albertus Magnus accomplished a great amount of experimental work in chemistry and had made a large series of actual observati

s treatises concerning Metals and Minerals; concerning Alchemy; A Treatise on the Secret of Chemistry; A Concordance, that is a Collection of observations from many sources with regard t

made in it. Of chemistry he speaks in his "Opus Tertium" in the following words: "There is a science which treats of the generation of things from their elements and of all inanimate things, as of the elements and liquids, simple and compound, common stones, gems an

e now call applied science. Humboldt, the distinguished German natural philosopher of the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, who was undoubtedly the most important leader in scientific thought in his time and whose own wor

c structure and physiology of plants. One of his works bearing the title of 'Liber Cosmographicus de Natura Locorum,' is a species of physical geography. I have found in it considerations on t

of those who make little of the science of the medieval period. When we have catalogued, for instance, the many facts with regard to astronomy and the physics of light that are supposed to have come to human ken much later, yet may be seen to have been clearly within the range of Albert's knowledge, and evidently forme

stian Schools and

en supposed, reflections of the seas and mountains of the earth, but configurations of her own surface. He notices, in order to correct it, the assertion of Aristotle that lunar rainbows appear only twice in fifty years; 'I myself,' he says have ob

book, wherein he catalogues and describes all the trees, plants, and herbs known in his time, he observes: "All that is here set down is the result of our own experience, or has been borrowed from authors whom we know to have written what their personal experience has confirmed: for in these matters experience alone can give certainty" (experimentum solum certificat in talibus). "Su

, these scholars of the Middle Ages did not devote themselves to nature study, are absurd, because if the critics but knew it there was profound interest in nature and all her manifestations and a series of discoveries that anticipated not a little of what we consider most important in our modern science. The story of Albert's botanical knowledge has been told in a single very full paragraph by his biographer. Sighart also quotes an appreciative opinion from a modern German botanist which will serv

istinguished the star from the bell-floral, tells us that a red rose will turn white when submitted to the vapor of sulphur and makes some very sagacious observations on the subject of germination. … The extraordinary erudition and originality of this treatise (his tenth book) has drawn from M. Meyer the following comment: 'No Botanist who lived before Albert can be compared to hi

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he science of geography at the present time. When we remember how much has been said about the ignorance of the men of the later Middle Ages as regards the shape of the earth and its inhabitants, and how many foolish notions they are supposed to have accepted with regard to the limitation of possible residents of the world and the queer ideas as to the

es the climate of the earth into seven zones. He smiles with a scholar's freedom at the simplicity of those who suppose that persons living at the opposite region of the earth must fall off, an opinion that can only rise out of the grossest ignorance, 'for when we speak of the lower hemisphere, this must be understood merely as relatively to ourselves.' It is as a geographer that Albert's superiority to the writers of his own time chiefly appears. Bearing in mind the astonishing ignorance which then prevailed on this subject, it is truly admirable to find him correctly tracing the chief mountain chains of Europe, with the rivers which take {51} t

he last century in all branches of physical science as to read Albertus Magnus' writings. Nothing can be more wholesome

he had probably also been close to Roger Bacon. After association with such men as these, any knowledge he displays with regard to physical science can scarcely be presumed to have been stumbled upon unawares. St. Thomas himself has left three treatises on chemical subjects and it is said that the first occurrence of the word amalgam can be traced to one of these treatises. Everybody was as much interested th

ut university teaching, and who, because they found a few things that now look ridiculous, as certain supposed facts of one generation always will to succeeding generations who know more about them, thought they could conclude from these as to the character of the whole content of medieval education. It is only another example of what Artemus Ward pointed out so effectively when he

by Harper in the Metaphysics of the School, Professor Tate in a lecture on Some Recent Advances in Physical Science repeated the old slander that even Aquinas occupied the attention of his students with such inane questions as: "How many angels could dance on the point of a needle?" Modern science very proudly insists that it occupies itself with observations and concerns itself little with autho

ave a short sketch, written by Robert of Sorbonne, the famous founder of the Sorbonne, in which he gives advice to attendants at that institution as to how they should spend their time,

make progress ought to ob

the study of a determined subject, as St. Bernard counselle

here is between reading and study, as St. Bernard says, the same difference as between a host and a guest

his memory with special care. Seneca said 'Cum multa percurreris in die, unum tibi elige quod illa die excoqua

rds which are not confided to writing

This exercise is even more profitable than study for it has as its result the clarifying of all doubts and the removing of

teaches that study ought to touch the heart and that one should profit by it

sity professor who has seen generation after generation {54} of st

e lost their time they gather together many sheets of parchment, make thick volumes of note books out of them, with many a blank interval, and cover them with elegant binding in red letters. Then they ret

to remain night and day bent over his books. He scarcely took the time to say an 'Our Father.' Nevertheless he had but four students. His colleague possessed a much less complete library, was less devoted to study and heard mass every morning before

he good student ought also to go and take his promenade along the banks of the S

the difference between reading and study, might very well be taken to heart at the present time, when there seems to be some idea that reading of itself is sufficient to enable one to obtain an educatio

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t the present time who will read with profound sympathy his emphatic advice to the University students that they must educ

this time, and that after having been much misunderstood will now be looked at more symp

sity course, and even when the English universities in the Eighteenth Century sank to be little more than pleasant abiding places where young men of the upper classes "ate their terms," the fact that it was the custom "to make the grand tour" of continental travel, supplied for much that was lacking in the serious side of their education. Little as this might be anticipated as a feature of the ruder t

eges of the clergy and the students without undertaking their obligations, adopted this wandering life as a permanent one. Being a privileged order, they readily found a living, or made it by begging. A monk of {56} the early university period writes: 'The scholars are accustomed to

velopment in rather good shape. Besides as we must always remember in educational questions, evils are ever exaggerated and the memory of them is prone to live longer and to loom up larger than that of the good with which they were associated and to which indeed, as anyone of reasonable experience in educational circles knows, they may constitute by

a time at Paris, lectured in various Italian universities and then finally at the University of Rome to which he was tempted by the Popes. Duns Scotus, besides teaching in Oxford, taught also at Paris. Alexander of Hales before him seems to have done the same thing. Roger Bacon, after studying at the University of Paris, seems to have commenced teaching there, though most of his professional work was {57} accomplished at the University of Oxford. Raymond Lully probably had professional

UTTRESS

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