<h1>III <br/> WHAT AND HOW THEY STUDIED AT THE UNIVERSITIES.</h1>
<p>It is usually the custom for text books of education to dismiss the
teaching at the universities of the Middle Ages with some such
expression as: "The teachers were mainly engaged in metaphysical
speculations and the students were occupied with exercises in logic
and in dialectics, learning in long drawn out disputations how to use
the intellectual instruments they possessed but never actually
applying them. All knowledge was supposed to be amenable to increase
through dialectical discussion and all truth was supposed, to be
obtainable as the conclusion of a regular syllogism." Great fun
especially is made of the long-winded disputations, 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 conveyance of information. The sublime ignorance of
educators who talk thus about the century that saw the rise of the
universities in connection with the erection of the great Cathedrals,
is only equaled by their assumption of knowledge.</p>
<p>It is very easy to make fun of a past generation and often rather
difficult to enter into and appreciate its spirit. Ridicule comes
natural to human nature, alas! but sympathy requires serious mental
application for understanding's sake. Fortunately there has come in
recent years a very different feeling in the minds of many mature and
faithful students of this period, as regards the Middle Ages and its
education. 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 eminently true
if the dialectician is to devote himself to commercial enterprises in
his future life. If he is to take up one of the professions, however,
there may be some doubt as to whether even his practical effectiveness
will not be increased by a good course of logic. There is, however,
another point of view from which this matter of the study of
dialectics may be viewed, and which has been taken very well by Prof.
Saintsbury of the University of Edinburgh in a recent volume on the
Thirteenth Century.</p>
<p>He insists in a passage which we quote at length in the chapter on the
Prose of the Century, that if this training in logic had not been
obtained at this time in European development, the results might have
been serious for our modern languages and modern education. He says:
"If at the outset of the career of the modern languages, men had
thought with the looseness of modern thought, had indulged in the
haphazard slovenliness of modern logic, had popularized theology and
vulgarized rhetoric, as we have seen both popularized and vulgarized
since, we should indeed have been in evil case." He maintains that
"the far-reaching educative 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." Condorcet went even further
than this, and used expressions that doubless will be a great source
of surprise to those who do not realize how much of admiration is
always engendered in those who really study the schoolmen seriously
and do not take opinions of them from the chance reading of a few
scattered passages, or depend for the data of their judgment on some
second-hand authority, who thought it clever to abuse these old-time
thinkers. Condorcet thought them far in advance of the old Greek
philosophers for, he said, "Logic, ethics, and metaphysics
itself, owe to scholasticism a precision unknown to the ancients
themselves."</p>
<p>With regard to the methods and contents of the teaching in the
undergraduate department of the university, that is, in what we would
now call the arts department, there is naturally no little interest 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 we know in this
matter in a paragraph so full of information that we quote it in order
to give our readers the best possible idea in a compendious form of
these details of the old-time education.</p>
<p class="cite">
"By statutes issued at various times during the Thirteenth Century
it was provided that the professor should read, that is expound, the
text of certain standard authors in philosophy and theology. In a
document published by Denifle, (the distinguished authority on
medieval universities) and by him referred 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
Donatus's Barbarismus. A few years later (1255), the following works
are prescribed: Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima, De
Animalibus, De Caelo et Mundo, Meteorica, the minor psychological
treatises and some Arabian or Jewish works, such as the Liber de
Causis and De Differentia Spirititus et Animae."
<br/><br/>
"The first degree for which the student of arts presented himself
was that of bachelor. The candidate for this degree, after a
preliminary test called responsiones (this regulation went into
effect not later than 1275), presented himself for the determination
which was a public defense of a certain number of theses against
opponents chosen from the audience. At the end of the disputation,
the defender summed up, or determined, his conclusions. After
determining, 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 in a <i>collatio</i>, 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 <i>inceptio</i>, or inaugural
lecture, and was actually installed (<i>birrettatio</i>). If he continued
to teach he was called <i>magisier actu regens</i>; if he departed from
the university or took up other work, he was called <i>magister non
regens</i>. It may be said that, as a general rule, the course of
reading was: (1) for the bachelor's degree, grammar, logic, and
psychology; (2) for the licentiate, natural philosophy; (3) for the
master's degree, ethics, and the completion of the course of natural
philosophy."</p>
<p>Quite apart from the value of its methods, however, scholasticism in
certain of its features had a value in the material which it discussed
and developed that modern generations only 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 which will seem little short of rankly heretical to
those who swear by modern science, and yet may serve to inject some
eminently suggestive ideas into a sadly misunderstood subject.</p>
<p class="cite">
"Yet there has always in generous souls who have some tincture of
philosophy, subsisted a curious kind of sympathy and yearning over
the work of these generations of mainly disinterested scholars, who,
whatever they were, were thorough, and whatever they could not do,
could think. <i>And there, have even, in these latter days, been some
graceless ones who have asked whether the Science of the nineteenth
century, after an equal interval, will be of any more positive
value—whether it will not have even less comparative interest than
that which appertains to the Scholasticism of the Thirteenth."</i></p>
<p>In the light of this it has seemed well to try to show in terms of
present-day science some of the important reflections with regard to
such problems of natural history, as magnetism, the composition of
matter, 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 benefit of the enthusiastic students who flocked to the
universities. We will find in such a review though it must necessarily
be brief many more anticipations of modern science than would be
thought possible.</p>
<p>To take the example for the moment of magnetism which is usually
considered to be a subject entirely of modern attention, a good idea
of the intense interest of this century in things scientific, can be
obtained from the following short paragraph in which Brother Potamian
in his sketch 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 clearly that there must have been wide-spread
interest in such scientific phenomena, since they had attracted the
attention of literary writers, who would not have spoken of them
doubtless, but that they knew that in this they would be satisfying as
well as exciting public interest.</p>
<p class="cite">
"Abbot Neckam, the Augustinian (1157-1217), distinguished between
the properties of the two ends of the lodestone, and gives in his De
Utensilibus, what is perhaps the earliest reference to the mariner's
compass that we have. Albertus Magnus, the Dominican (1193-1280), in
his treatise De Mineralibus, enumerates different 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), Brunetto Latini, poet, orator and
philosopher (the teacher of Dante), in his Tresor des Sciences, a
veritable library, written in Paris in 1260; Raymond Lully, the
enlightened Doctor, in his treatise, De Contemplatione, begun in
1272, and Guido Guinicelli, the poet-priest of Bologna, who died in
1276." [Footnote 4]</p>
<p class="footnote">
[Footnote 4: The letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet, A. D.
1269, translated by Bro. Arnold, M. Sc., with an Introductory Note
by Bro. Potamian, N. Y., 1904.]</p>
<br/>
<p>The metaphysics of the medieval universities have come in for quite as
much animadversion, not to say ridicule, as the dialectics. None of
its departments is spared in the condemnation, though most fun is made
of the gropings of the medieval mind after truth in the physical
sciences. The cosmology, the science of matter as it appealed to the
medieval mind, is usually considered to have been so entirely
speculative as to deserve 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 matter and of the problem of the
forces connected with it, the minds of the medieval schoolmen were
occupied with just the same questions that have been most interesting
to the Nineteenth Century and that curiously enough the conclusions
they reached, though by very different methods of investigation, were
almost exactly the same as those to which modern physical scientists
have attained by their refined methods of investigation.</p>
<p>One or two examples will suffice, I think, to show very clearly that
the students of the Thirteenth Century had presented to them
practically the same problems with regard to matter, its origin and
composition, as occupy the students of the present generation. For
instance Thomas Aquinas usually known as St. Thomas, in a series 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 <i>"Nihil omnino in nihilum
redigetur</i>,"' "Nothing at all will ever be reduced to nothingness." By
this it was very evident from the context that he meant that matter
would never be annihilated and could never be destroyed. It might be
changed in various ways but it could never go back into the
nothingness from which it had been taken by the creative act.
Annihilation was pronounced as not being a part of the scheme of
things as far as the human mind could hope to fathom its meaning.</p>
<p>In this sentence, then, Thomas of Aquin was proclaiming the
doctrine of the indestructibility of matter. It was not until well on
in the nineteenth century that the chemists and physicists of modern
times realized the truth of this great principle. The chemists had
seen matter change its form in many ways, had seen it disappear
apparently in the smoke of fire or evaporate under the influence of
heat, but investigation proved that if 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 matter. St. Thomas' conclusion "Nothing at all
will ever be reduced to nothingness" had anticipated this doctrine by
nearly seven centuries. What happened in the Nineteenth Century was
that there came an experimental demonstration of the truth of the
principle. The principle itself, however, had been reached long before
by the human mind by speculative processes quite as inerrable in their
way as the more modern method of investigation.</p>
<p>When St. Thomas used the aphorism "Nothing at all will ever be reduced
to nothingness" there was another signification that he attached to
the words quite as clearly as that by which they expressed the
indestructibility of matter. For him <i>Nihil</i> or nothing meant neither
<i>matter</i> nor <i>form</i>, that is, neither the material substance nor the
energy which is contained in it. He meant then, that no energy would
ever be destroyed 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 Century. These examples should, I
think, serve to illustrate that the minds of medieval students were
occupied with practically the same questions as those which are now
taught to the university students of our day. There are, however, some
even more striking anticipations of modern teaching that will
serve to demonstrate this community of educational interests in spite
of seven centuries of time separation.</p>
<p>In recent years we have come to realize that matter is not the
manifold material we were accustomed to think it when we accepted the
hypothesis that there were some seventy odd different kinds of atoms,
each one absolutely independent of any other and representing an
ultimate term in science. The atomic theory from this standpoint has
proved to be only a working hypothesis that was useful for a time, but
that our physicists are now agreed must not be considered as something
absolute. Radium has been observed changing into helium and the
relations of atoms to one another as they are now known, make it
almost certain that all of them have an underlying sub-stratum the
same in all, but differentiated by the dynamic energies with which
matter in its different forms is gifted. Sir Oliver Lodge has stated
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 very clearly set
forth, profoundly discussed, and amply illustrated by the schoolmen.
In its development this theory was made to be of the greatest help in
the explanation of many other difficulties with regard to living as
well as non-living things in their hands. The theory has its
difficulties, but they are less than those of any other theory of the
constitution of matter, and it has been accepted by more philosophic
thinkers since the Thirteenth Century than any other doctrine of
similar nature. It may be said that it was reached only by deduction
and not by experimental observation. Such an expression, however,
instead of being really an objection is rather a demonstration of the
fact that great truths may be reached by deduction yet only
demonstrated by inductive methods many centuries later.</p>
<p>Of course it may well be said even after all these communities of
interest between the medieval and the modern teaching of the general
principles of science has been pointed out, that the universities of
the Middle Ages did not present the subjects under discussion in a
practical way, and their teaching was not likely to lead to directly
beneficial results in applied science. 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 medieval teaching have manifestly ever made it their
business to know anything about the actual facts of old-time
university teaching by definite knowledge, but have rather allowed
themselves to be guided by speculation and by inadequate second-hand
authorities, whose dicta they have never taken the trouble to
substantiate by a glance at contemporary authorities on medieval
matters.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to quote for the information of such men, the
opinion of the greatest of medieval scientists with regard to the
reason why men do not obtain real knowledge more rapidly than would
seem ought to be the case, from the amount of work which they have
devoted to obtaining it. Roger Bacon, summing up for Pope Clement the
body of doctrine that he was teaching at the University of Oxford in
the Thirteenth Century, starts out with the principle that there are
four grounds of human ignorance. "These are first, trust in inadequate
authority; second, the force of custom which leads men to accept too
unquestioningly what has been accepted before their time; third, the
placing of confidence 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 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 ground has yet been cut away from
beneath the feet of students, although six centuries ago the Oxford
friar clearly pointed out its character. We still make sheep walks of
second, third, and fourth and fiftieth-hand references to authority;
still we are the slaves of habit; still we are found following too
frequently the untaught crowd; still we flinch from the righteous and
wholesome phrase, 'I do not know'; and acquiesce actively in the
opinion of others that we know what we appear to know. Substitute
honest research, original and independent thought, strict truth in the
comparison of only what we really know with what is really known by
others, and the strong redoubt of ignorance has fallen."</p>
<p>The number of things which Roger Bacon succeeded in discovering by the
application of the principle of testing everything by personal
observation, is almost incredible to a modern student of science and
of education who has known nothing before of the progress in science
made by this wonderful man. He has been sometimes declared to be the
discoverer of gunpowder, 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 more formidable than those
produced by nature. A small quantity of prepared matter occasions a
terrible explosion accompanied by a brilliant light. One may multiply
this phenomenon so far as to destroy a city or an army." Considering
how little was known about gunpowder at this time, this was of itself
a marvelous anticipation of what might be accomplished by it.</p>
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RATHHAUS (TANGERMÜNDE)</p>
<p>Bacon prophesied, however, much more than merely destructive
effects from the use of high explosives, and indeed it is almost
amusing to see how closely he anticipated some of the most modern
usages of high explosives for motor purposes. He seems to have
concluded that some time the apparently uncontrollable forces of
explosion would come under the control 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. One may also make carriages
which without the aid of any animal will run with remarkable
swiftness." [Footnote 5] When we recall that the very latest thing
in transportation are motor-boats and automobiles driven by gasoline,
a high explosive, Roger Bacon's prophesy becomes one of these weird
anticipations of human progress which seem almost more than human.</p>
<p class="footnote">
[Footnote 5: These quotations are taken from Ozanam's Dante and
Catholic Philosophy, published by the Cathedral Library Association,
New York, 1897. ]</p>
<p>It was not with regard to explosives alone, however, that Roger Bacon
was to make great advances and still more marvelous anticipations in
physical science. He was not, as is sometimes claimed for him, either
the inventor of the telescope or of the theory of lenses. He did more,
however, than perhaps anyone else to make the principles of lenses
clear and to establish 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 year to its proper
place, and suggested the method by which future errors of this kind
could be avoided. His ideas were too far beyond his century to be
applied in a practical way, but they were not to be without their
effect and it is said that they formed the basis of the subsequent
correction of the calendar in the time of Pope Gregory XIII three
centuries later.</p>
<p>It is rather surprising to find how much besides the theory of lenses
Friar Bacon had succeeded in finding out in the department of optics.
He taught, for instance, the principle of the aberration of light,
and, still more marvelous to consider, taught that light did not
travel instantaneously but had a definite 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 Römer, the German astronomer, demonstrated the motion of light
and its rate, by his observations upon the moons of Jupiter at
different phases of the earth's orbit, which showed that the light of
these moons took a definite and quite appreciable time to reach the
earth after their eclipse by the planet was over.</p>
<p>We are not surprised to find that Bacon should praise those of his
contemporaries who devoted themselves to mathematics and to
experimental observations in science. Of one of his correspondents who
even from distant Italy sent him his observations in order that he
might have the great Franciscan's precious comments on them. Bacon has
given quite a panegyric. The reasons for his praise, 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 the discourses of men and their wordy warfare, but
quietly and diligently pursues the works of wisdom. Therefore, what
others grope after blindly, as bats in the evening twilight, this man
contemplates in all their brilliancy because he is a master of
experiment. Hence, he knows all natural science whether pertaining to
medicine and alchemy, or to matters celestial and terrestrial.</p>
<p class="footnote">
"He has worked diligently in the smelting of ores as also in the
working of minerals; he is thoroughly acquainted with all sorts of
arms and implements used in military service and in hunting, besides
which he is skilled in agriculture and in the measurement of lands.
It is impossible to write a useful or correct treatise in
experimental philosophy without mentioning this man's name.
Moreover, he pursues knowledge for its own sake; for if he wished to
obtain royal favor, he could easily find sovereigns who would honor
and enrich him."</p>
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CATHEDRAL (YORK)</p>
<p class="image">
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CATHEDRAL (HEREFORD)</p>
<p>Lest it should be thought that these expressions of laudatory
appreciation of the great Thirteenth Century scientist are dictated
more by the desire to magnify his work and to bring out the influence
in science of the Churchmen 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 supposed to be somewhat
partial in their judgment. This opinion will fortify the doubters who
must have authority and at the same time sums up very excellently the
position which Roger Bacon occupies in the History of Science.</p>
<p>Dr. Whewell says that Roger Bacon's Opus Majus is "the encyclopedia
and Novam Organon of the Thirteenth Century, a work equally wonderful
with regard to its general scheme and to the special treatises with
which the outlines of the plans are filled up. The professed object of
the work is to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of
philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had 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 that time assumed; and
improvements of a very wide and striking kind are proposed in some of
the principal branches of study. Even if the work had no leading
purposes it would have been highly valuable as a treasure of the most
solid knowledge and soundest speculations of the time; even if it had
contained no such details it would have been a work most remarkable
for its general views and scope."</p>
<p>It is only what might have been expected, however, from Roger
Bacon's training that he should have made great progress in the
physical sciences. At the University of Paris his favorite teacher was
Albertus Magnus, who was himself deeply interested in all the physical
sciences, though 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 observations. He was a theologian as
well as a philosopher and a scientist. Some idea of the immense
industry of the man can be obtained from the fact that his complete
works as published consist of some twenty large folio volumes, each
one of which contains on the average at least 500,000 words.</p>
<p>Among these works are many treatises relating to chemistry. The titles
of some of them will serve to show how explicit was Albert in his
consideration of various chemical subjects. He has 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 to the Philosopher's Stone;
A Brief Compend on the Origin of the Metals; A Treatise on Compounds;
most of these are to be found in his works under the general heading
"Theatrum Chemicum."</p>
<p>It is not surprising for those who know of Albert's work, to find that
his pupil Roger Bacon defined the limits of chemistry very accurately
and showed that he understood exactly what the subject and methods of
investigation must be, in order that advance should be 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 and marble, gold and
other metals, sulphur, salts, pigments, lapis lazuli, minium and other
colors, oils, bitumen, and infinite more of which we find nothing in
the books of Aristotle; nor are the natural philosophers nor any of
the Latins acquainted with these things."</p>
<p>In physics Albertus Magnus was, if possible, more advanced and
progressive even than in chemistry. His knowledge in the physical
sciences was not merely speculative, but partook to a great degree of
the nature of what we 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 work was great enough to
have an enduring influence in spite of the immense progress of the
Nineteenth Century, has summed up Albert's work and given the headings
under which his scientific research must be considered. He says:</p>
<p class="cite">
"Albertus Magnus was equally active and influential in promoting the
study of natural science and of the Aristotelian philosophy. His
works contain some exceedingly acute remarks on the organic
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 the
dependence of temperature concurrently on latitude and elevation,
and on the effect of different angles of incidence of the sun's rays
in heating the ground, <i>which have excited my surprise</i>."</p>
<p>To take up some of Humboldt's headings in their order and illustrate
them by quotations from Albert himself and from condensed accounts as
they appear in his biographer Sighart and in Christian Schools and
Scholars [Footnote 6], will serve to show at once the extent of
Albert's knowledge and the presumptuous ignorance 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 formed the subject of his teaching at various
times at both Paris and Cologne, for they are found in his authentic
works, we can scarcely help but be amused at the pretentious
misconception that has relegated their author to a place in education
so trivial as is that which is represented in many minds by the term
scholastic.</p>
<p class="footnote">
[Footnote 6: Christian Schools and Scholars. Drane.]</p>
<p class="cite">
"He decides that the Milky Way is nothing but a vast assemblage of stars, but supposes naturally
enough that they occupy the orbit which receives the light of the
sun. The figures visible on the moon's disc are not, he says, as
hitherto has been 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 observed
two in a single year.' He has something to say on the refraction of
a solar ray, notices certain crystals which have a power of
refraction, and remarks that none of the ancients and few moderns
were acquainted with the properties of mirrors."</p>
<p>Albert's great pupil Roger Bacon is rightly looked upon as the true
father of inductive science, an honor that history has unfortunately
taken from him to confer it undeservedly on his namesake of four
centuries later, but the teaching out of which Roger Bacon was to
develop the principles of experimental science can be found in many
places in his master's writings. In Albert's tenth 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" (<i>experimentum solum
certificat in talibus</i>). "Such an expression," says his biographer,
"which might have proceeded from the pen of (Francis) Bacon, argues in
itself a prodigious scientific progress, and shows that the medieval
friar was on the track so successfully pursued by modern natural
philosophy. He had fairly shaken off the shackles which had hitherto
tied up discovery, and was the slave neither of Pliny nor of
Aristotle."</p>
<p>Botany is supposed to be a very modern science and to most people
Humboldt's expression that he found in Albertus Magnus's writings some
"exceedingly acute remarks on the organic structure and physiology of
plants" will come as a supreme surprise. A few details with regard to
Albert's botanical knowledge, however, will serve to heighten that
surprise and to show, that the foolish tirades of modern sciolists,
who have often expressed their wonder that with all the beauties
of nature around them, 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 serve to dispel any
doubts with regard to Albert's position in botany that modern students
might perhaps continue to harbor, unless they had good authority to
support their opinion, though of course it will be remembered that the
main difference between the medieval and the modern mind is only too
often said to be, that the medieval required an authority while the
modern makes its opinion for itself. Even the most skeptical of modern
minds however, will probably be satisfied by the following paragraph.</p>
<p class="cite">
"He was acquainted with the sleep of plants, with the periodical
opening and closing of blossoms, with the diminution of sap through
evaporation from the cuticle of the leaves, and with the influence
of the distribution of the bundles of vessels on the folial
indentations. His minute observations on the forms and variety of
plants intimate an exquisite sense of floral beauty. He
distinguished 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
him, unless Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and after
him none has painted nature in such living colors or studied it so
profoundly until the time of Conrad Gesner and Cesalpino.' All
honor, then, to the man who made such astonishing progress in the
science of nature as to find no one, I will not say to surpass, but
even to equal him for the space of three centuries."</p>
<p>We point out in the chapter on Geography and Exploration how much this
wonderful Thirteenth Century added to the knowledge of geographical
science. Even before the great explorers of this time, however, had
accomplished their work, this particular branch of science had made
such great progress as would bring it quite within the domain of what
we call the 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 antipodes, the following passages taken from
Albert's biographer will serve better than anything else to show how
absurdly the traditional notions with regard to this time and its
knowledge, have been permitted by educators to tinge what are supposed
to be serious opinions with regard to the subject matters of education
in that early university period:</p>
<p class="cite">
"He treats as fabulous the commonly-received idea, in which Bede had
acquiesced, that the region of the earth south of the equator was
uninhabitable, and considers, that from the equator to the South
Pole, the earth was not only habitable, but in all probability
actually inhabited, except directly at the poles, where he imagines
the cold to be excessive. If there be any animals there, he says,
they must have very thick skins to defend them from the rigor of the
climate, and they are probably of a white color. The intensity of
cold, is however, tempered by the action of the sea. He describes
the antipodes and the countries they comprise, and divides 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 their source in
each; remarking on portions of coast which have in later times been
submerged by the ocean, and islands which have been raised by
volcanic action above the level of the sea; noticing the
modification of climate caused by mountains, seas and forests, and
the division of the human race whose differences he ascribes to the
effect upon them of the countries they inhabit! In speaking of the
British Isles he alludes to the commonly-received idea that another
distant island called Tile or Thule, existed far in the Western
Ocean, uninhabitable by reason of its frightful climate, but which,
he says, has perhaps not yet been visited by man."</p>
<p>Nothing will so seriously disturb the complacency of modern minds as
to the wonderful advances that have been made in the last century in
all branches of physical science as to read Albertus Magnus' writings.
Nothing can be more wholesomely chastening of present day conceit than
to get a proper appreciation of the extent of the knowledge of the
Schoolmen.</p>
<p>Albertus Magnus' other great pupil besides Roger Bacon was St. Thomas
Aquinas. If any suspicion were still left that Thomas did not
appreciate just what the significance of his teachings in physics was,
when he announced that neither matter nor force could ever be reduced
to nothingness, it would surely be removed by the consideration that
he had been for many years in intimate relations with Albert and that
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 then, as
we are at the present time, in the transformation of metals and
mercury with its silvery sheen, its facility to enter into metallic
combinations of all kinds, and its elusive ways, naturally made it the
center of scientific interest quite as radium is at the present
moment. Further material with regard to St. Thomas and also to the
subject of education will be found in the chapter, Aquinas the
Scholar.</p>
<p>After this brief review of only a few of the things that they taught
in science at the Thirteenth Century universities, most people
will scarcely fail to wonder how such peculiar erroneous impressions
with regard to the uselessness of university teaching and training
have come to be so generally accepted. The fault lies, of course, with
those who thought they knew something about 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 said that "there is nothing that makes men so
ridiculous as the knowing so many things that aint so." We have been
accepting without question ever so many things that simply are not so
with regard to these wonderful generations, who not only organized the
universities but organized the teaching in them on lines not very
different from those which occupy people seven centuries later.</p>
<p>What would be the most amusing feature, if it were not unfortunately
so serious an arraignment of the literature that has grown up around
these peculiar baseless notions with regard to scholastic philosophy,
is the number of men of science who have permitted themselves to make
fun of certain supposed lucubrations of the great medieval
philosophers. It is not so very long ago that, as pointed out 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 authority. Prof.
Tate in this unhappy quotation, shows not only that he has made no
personal studies in medieval philosophy but that he has accepted a
very inadequate authority for the statements which he makes with as
much confidence as if they had been the result of prolonged research
in this field. Many other modern scientists (?) have fallen into like
blunders. (For Huxley's opinion see. <SPAN href="#466Hux">Appendix</SPAN>)</p>
<p>The modern student, as well as the teacher, is prone to wonder what
were the methods of study and the habits of life of the students
of the Thirteenth Century, and fortunately we have 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, so that at least we are able to get a hint of
the ideals that were set before the student. Robert, whose long
experience of university life made him thoroughly competent to advise,
said:</p>
<p class="cite">
"The student who wishes to make progress ought to observe six
essential rules.
<br/><br/>
"First: He ought to consecrate a certain hour every day to the study
of a determined subject, as St. Bernard counselled his monks in his
letter to the Brothers of the Mont Dieu.
<br/><br/>
"Second: He ought to concentrate his attention upon what he reads
and ought not to let it pass lightly. There is between reading and
study, as St. Bernard says, the same difference as between a host
and a guest, between a passing salutation exchanged in the street
and an embrace prompted by an unalterable affection.
<br/><br/>
"Third: He ought to extract from the daily study one thought, some
truth or other, and engrave it deeply upon his memory with special
care. Seneca said <i>'Cum multa percurreris in die, unum tibi elige
quod illa die excoquas'</i>—When you have run over many things in a
day select one for yourself which you should digest well on that
day.
<br/><br/>
"Fourth: Write a resume of it, for words which are not confided to
writing fly as does the dust before the wind.
<br/><br/>
"Fifth: Talk the matter over with your fellow-students, either in
the regular recitation or in your familiar conversation. This
exercise is even more profitable than study for it has as its result
the clarifying of all doubts and the removing of all the obscurity
that study may have left. Nothing is perfectly known unless it has
been tried by the tooth of disputation.
<br/><br/>
"Sixth: Pray, for this is indeed one of the best ways of learning.
St. Bernard teaches that study ought to touch the heart and that one
should profit by it always by elevating the heart to God, <i>without,
however, interrupting the study</i>."</p>
<p>Sorbonne proceeds in a tone that vividly recalls the modern university
professor who has seen generation after generation of students
and has learned to realize how many of them waste their time.</p>
<p class="cite">
"Certain students act like fools; they display great subtility over
nonsensical subjects and exhibit themselves devoid of intelligence
with regard to their most important studies. So as not to seem to
have 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 return to the paternal domicile with their little sack filled
up with knowledge which can be stolen from them by any thief that
comes along, or may be eaten by rats or by worms or destroyed by
fire or water.
<br/><br/>
"In order to acquire instruction the student must abstain from
pleasure and not allow himself to be hampered by material cares.
There was at Paris not long since two teachers who were great
friends. One of them had seen much, had read much and used 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 delivering his lecture.
In spite of this, his classroom was full. 'How do you do it?' asked
his friend. 'It is very simple,' said his friend smiling. 'God
studies for me. I go to mass and when I come back I know by heart
all that I have to teach.'"
<br/><br/>
"Meditation," so Sorbonne continues, "is suitable not only for the
master, but the good student ought also to go and take his promenade
along the banks of the Seine, not to play there, but in order to
repeat his lesson and meditate upon it."</p>
<p>These instructions for students are not very different from those that
would be issued by an interested head of a university department to
the freshmen of the present day. His insistence, especially on 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 education.
The lesson of learning one thing a day and learning that well, might
have been selected as a motto for students for all succeeding
generations with manifest advantage to the success of college study.</p>
<p>In other things Sorbonne departs further from our modern ideas in the
matter of education, but still there are many even at the present time
who will read with profound sympathy his emphatic advice to the
University students that they must educate their hearts as well as
their intellects, and make their education subserve the purpose of
bringing them closer to God.</p>
<p>A word about certain customs that prevailed more or less generally in
the universities at this time, and that after having been much
misunderstood will now be looked at more sympathetically in the light
of recent educational developments will not be out of place here.</p>
<p>One of the advantages of modern German university education has often
been acclaimed to be the fact that students are tempted to make
portions of their studies in various cities, since all the courses are
equalized in certain ways, so that the time spent at any one of them
will be counted properly for their degrees. It has long been
recognized that travel makes the best possible complement to a
university 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 times of the Thirteenth Century, when travel was so difficult,
it must be counted as one of the great advantages for the inquiring
spirits of the time. Dante, besides attending the universities in
Italy, and he certainly was at several of them, was also at Paris at
one time and probably also at Oxford. Professor Monroe in his text
book in the History of Education has stated this custom very
distinctly.</p>
<p class="cite">
"With the founding of the universities and the establishment of the
nations in practically every university, it became quite customary
for students to travel from university to university, finding in
each a home in their appropriate nation. Many, however, willing to
accept the privileges 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 the early university
period writes: 'The scholars are accustomed to wander throughout the
whole world and visit all the cities, and their many studies bring
them understanding. For in Paris they seek a knowledge of the
liberal arts; of the ancient writers at Orleans; of medicine at
Salernum; of the black art at Toledo; and in no place decent
manners.'"</p>
<p>With regard to the old monk's criticism it must be remembered that old
age is always rather depreciative in criticism of the present and
over-appreciative of what happened in the past <i>se pueris</i>. Abuses
always seem to be creeping in that are going to ruin the force of
education, yet somehow the next generation succeeds in obtaining its
intellectual development 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 comparison only a very small amount.
Undoubtedly the wanderings of students brought with it many abuses,
and if we were to listen to some of the stories of foreign student
life in Paris in our own time, we might think that much of evil and
nothing of good was accomplished by such wandering, but inasmuch as we
do so we invite serious error of judgment.</p>
<p>Another striking feature of university life which constituted a
distinct anticipation of something very modern in our educational
system, was the lending of professors of different nationalities among
the universities. It is only at the beginning of the Twentieth Century
that we have reestablished this custom. In the Thirteenth Century,
however, Albertus Magnus taught for a time at Cologne and then later
at Paris and apparently also at Rome. St. Thomas of Aquin, after
having taught for 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 accomplished at the University of Oxford.
Raymond Lully probably had professional experiences at several Spanish
Universities besides at Paris. In a word, if a man were a
distinguished genius he was almost sure to be given the opportunity to
influence his generation at a number of centers of educational life,
and not be confined as has been the case in the centuries since to but
one or at most, and that more by accident than intent, to perhaps two.
In a word there is not a distinctive feature of modern university life
that was not anticipated in the Thirteenth Century.</p>
<p class="image">
<ANTIMG alt="" src="images/i057.jpg" border=1><br/>
FLYING BUTTRESS (AMIENS)</p>
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