e vision although it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect
beauty ineffable."

These examples of Dante's interest in scientific observation prove his
fitness to be considered a representative of his age in its love for
science. Instead, however, of proposing Dante as a typical example of
the experimental inquiry of his age--you may say that he is _sui
generis_--I shall call forth other witnesses.

First let Albertus Magnus speak. He was distinguished as a theologian
and philosopher and was also renowned as a scientist. In his tenth book
after describing all the trees, plants and herbs then known, he says:
"All that is here set down is the result of our own observation or has
been borrowed from others whom we have known to have written what their
personal experience has confirmed, for in these matters, experience
alone can give certainty (_experimentum solum certificat in talibus_)."

We may be sure that such an investigator showing in his method a
prodigious scientific progress was on the line so successfully followed
by modern natural philosophy. This conclusion is confirmed by evidence
from his other books showing that he did a great deal of experimental
work, especially in chemistry. In his treatise De Mineralibus, Albertus
Magnus keen to observe natural phenomena, enumerates different
properties of natural magnets and states some of the properties commonly
attributed to them.

In his book on Botany he treats of the organic structure and physiology
of plants so accurately as to draw from Meyer, a botanist of the
nineteenth century, this appreciative tribute. "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 with such
living colors or studied it so profoundly until the time of Conrad
Gesner and Cesalpino"--a high compliment indeed for Albertus for
leadership in science for three centuries. To quote Von Humboldt again,
"I have found in the book of Albertus Magnus, De Natura Locorum,
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, which have excited my surprise."

Albertus Magnus gains renown also from his distinguished pupil Roger
Bacon who, some think, should have the honor of being regarded as the
father of inductive science--an honor posterity has conferred upon
another of t