d to
this hour the Spanish race, in some respects the most gifted in Europe,
which began its career with everything in its favour and with every form
of noble achievement, remains in intellectual development behind every
other in Christendom.

To question the theological view of physical science was, even long
after the close of the Middle Ages, exceedingly perilous. We have seen
how one of Roger Bacon's unpardonable offences was his argument against
the efficacy of magic, and how, centuries afterward, Cornelius Agrippa,
Weyer, Flade, Loos, Bekker, and a multitude of other investigators and
thinkers, suffered confiscation of property, loss of position, and even
torture and death, for similar views.(275)

(275) For an account of Bacon's treatise, De Nullitate Magiae, see
Hoefer. For the uproar caused by Bacon's teaching at Oxford, see Kopp,
Geschichte der Chemie, Braunschweig, 1869, vol. i, p. 63; and for a
somewhat reactionary discussion of Bacon's relation to the progress
of chemistry, see a recent work by the same author, Ansichten uber die
Aufgabe der Chemie, Braunschweig, 1874, pp. 85 et seq.; also, for an
excellent summary, see Hoefer, Hist. de la Chimie, vol. i, pp. 368 et
seq. For probably the most thorough study of Bacon's general works
in science, and for his views of the universe, see Prof. Werner, Die
Kosmologie und allgemeine Naturlehre des Roger Baco, Wein, 1879. For
summaries of his work in other fields, see Whewell, vol. i, pp. 367,
368; Draper, p. 438; Saisset, Descartes et ses Precurseurs, deuxieme
edition, pp. 397 et seq.; Nourrisson, Progres de la Pensee humaine, pp.
271, 272; Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, Paris, 1865, vol. ii, p.
397; Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, vol. i, p. 417. As to
Bacon's orthodoxy, see Saisset, pp. 53, 55. For special examination of
causes of Bacon's condemnation, see Waddington, cited by Saisset, p.
14. For a brief but admirable statement of Roger Bacon's realtion to
the world in his time, and of what he might have done had he not been
thwarted by theology, see Dollinger, Studies in European History,
English translation, London, 1890, pp. 178, 179. For a good example of
the danger of denying the full power of Satan, even in much more recent
times and in a Protestant country, see account of treatment in Bekker's
Monde Enchante by the theologians of Holland, in Nisard, Histoire des
Livres Populaires, vol. i, pp. 172, 173. Kopp, in his Ansichten, pushes