tyranny, and struggle under the reign of a barbarous enemy of
Christendom; and after that, the end of the world. [Footnote: (1)
His coming may be fixed by astrology: Opus Majus, iv. p. 269
(inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore
Antichristi; cp. p. 402). (2) His coming means the end of the world:
ib. p. 262. (3) We are not far from it: ib. p. 402. One of the
reasons which seem to have made this view probable to Bacon was the
irruption of the Mongols into Europe during his lifetime; cp. p. 268
and vii. p. 234. Another was the prevalent corruption, especially of
the clergy, which impressed him deeply; see Compendium studii
philosophiae, ed. Brewer, p. 402. (4) "Truth will prevail," etc.:
Opus Majus, i. pp. 19, 20. He claimed for experimental science that
it would produce inventions which could be usefully employed against
Antichrist: ib. vii. p. 221.] It is from this point of view that we
must appreciate the observations which he made on the advancement of
knowledge. "It is our duty," he says, "to supply what the ancients
have left incomplete, because we have entered into their labours,
which, unless we are asses, can stimulate us to achieve better
results"; Aristotle corrected the errors of earlier thinkers;
Avicenna and Averroes have corrected Aristotle in some matters and
have added much that is new; and so it will go on till the end of
the world. And Bacon quotes passages from Seneca's "Physical
Inquiries" to show that the acquisition of knowledge is gradual.
Attention has been already called to those passages, and it was
shown how perverse it is, on the strength of such remarks, to claim
Seneca as a teacher of the doctrine of Progress. The same claim has
been made for Bacon with greater confidence, and it is no less
perverse. The idea of Progress is glaringly incongruous with his
vision of the world. If his programme of revolutionising secular
learning had been accepted--it fell completely dead, and his work