Duo enim simt modi
cognoscendi, scilicet per argumentum et experimentum. Argumentum concludit
et facit nos concedere conclusionem, sed non certificat neque removet
dubitationem ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat
via experientiae; quia multi habent argumenta ad scibilia, sed quia non
habent experientiam, negligunt ea, nee vitant nociva nex persequuntue
bona. J. H. Bridges, _The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon_ (Oxford, 1897), II,
167.]
Clement died in 1268. The papacy remained vacant for a couple of years,
but in 1271 Gregory X came in on a conservative reaction. Bacon passed
most of the rest of his life in prison, perhaps through his own
ungovernable temper, and ostensibly his writings seem to have had little
or no effect on his contemporaries, yet it is certain that he was not an
isolated specimen of a type of intelligence which suddenly bloomed during
the Reformation. Bacon constantly spoke of his friends, but his friends
evidently did not share his temperament. The scientific man has seldom
relished martyrdom, and Galileo's experience as late as 1633 shows what
risks men of science ran who even indirectly attacked the vested interests
of the Church. After the middle of the thirteenth century the danger was
real enough to account for any degree of secretiveness, and a striking
case of this timidity is related by Bacon himself.
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