n 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 which
he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to be
remembered. [Footnote: Cp. Opus Tertium, c. iv. p. 18, omnes scientiae
sunt connexae et mutuis se fovent auxiliis sicut partes ejusdem totius,
quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non solum propter se sed pro aliis.]
It is the motif of the Opus Majus, and it would have been more fully
elaborated if he had lived to complete the encyclopaedic work, Scriptum
Principale, which he had only begun before his death. His other title
to fame is well-known. He realised, as no man had done before him, the
importance of the experimental method in investigating the secrets of
nature, and was an almost solitary pioneer in the paths to which his
greater namesake, more than three hundred years later, was to invite the
attention of the world.

But, although Roger Bacon was inspired by these enlightened ideas,
although