times as well, down to about the year 1750. Erigena, for example, in
the ninth century, John of Salisbury in the twelfth, Raimond Lully in
the thirteenth, with a hundred others, speak straight to us in the
very language that they naturally adopted in thinking of learned
matters.

They thus come quite close to us even at this distance of time: we are
in direct contact with them, and really come to know them. How would
it have been if every one of them spoke in the language that was
peculiar to his time and country? We should not understand even the
half of what they said. A real intellectual contact with them would be
impossible. We should see them like shadows on the farthest horizon,
or, may be, through the translator's telescope.

It was with an eye to the advantage of writing in Latin that Bacon, as
he himself expressly states, proceeded to translate his _Essays_ into
that language, under the title _Sermones fideles_; at which work
Hobbes assisted him.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Thomae Hobbes vita: _Carolopoli apud Eleutherium
Anglicum_, 1681, p. 22.]

Here let me observe, by way of parenthesis, that when patriotism tries
to urge its claims in the domain of knowledge, it commits an offence
which should not be tolerated. For in those purely human questions
which interest all men alike, where truth, insight, beauty, should be
of sole account, what can be more impertinent than to let preference
for the nation to which a man's precious self happens to belong,
affect the balance of judgment, and thus supply a reason for doing
violence to truth and being unjust to the great minds of a foreign