1859.]who stands on an isolated pinnacle of his own in the Middle
Ages, deserves particular consideration. It has been claimed for him
that he announced the idea of Progress; he has even been compared to
Condorcet or Comte. Such claims are based on passages taken out of
their context and indulgently interpreted in the light of later
theories. They are not borne out by an examination of his general
conception of the universe and the aim of his writings.

His aim was to reform higher education and introduce into the
universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular
studies. His chief work, the "Opus Majus," was written for this
purpose, to which his exposition of his own discoveries was
subordinate. It was addressed and sent to Pope Clement IV., who had
asked Bacon to give him an account of his researches, and was
designed to persuade the Pontiff of the utility of science from an
ecclesiastical point of view, and to induce him to sanction an
intellectual reform, which without the approbation of the Church
would at that time have been impossible. With great ingenuity and
resourcefulness he sought to show that the studies to which he was
devoted--mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry--were
indispensable to an intelligent study of theology and Scripture.
Though some of his arguments may have been urged simply to capture
the Pope's good-will, there can be no question that Bacon was
absolutely sincere in his view that theology was the mistress
(dominatrix) of the sciences and that their supreme value lay in
being necessary to it.

It was, indeed, on this principle of the close interconnection of
all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme
of reform. And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in