be short.

The frequency with which Bacon recurs to this subject, and the emphasis
he lays on it, show that the appearance of Anti-Christ was a fixed
point in his mental horizon. When he looked forward into the future,
the vision which confronted him was a scene of corruption, 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 was forgotten for many ages,--he would have been the
author of a progressive reform; but how many reformers have there been
before and after Bacon on whose minds the idea of Progress never dawned?

[Footnote: Bacon