l as to be a model for all the after time. They
accomplished as much in education as they did in all the other arts,
their universities had more students than any that have existed down to
our own time, and they were enthusiastic students and their professors
were ardent teachers, writers, observers, investigators. While we have
been accustomed to think of them as neglecting science, their minds were
occupied entirely with science. They succeeded in anticipating much more
of our modern thought, and even scientific progress, than we have had
any idea until comparatively recent years. The work of the later Middle
Ages in mathematics is particularly strong, and was the incentive for
many succeeding generations. Roger Bacon insisted that, without
mathematics, there was no possibility of real advance in physical
science. They had the right ideas in every way. While they were occupied
more with the philosophical and ethical sciences than we are, these were
never pursued to the neglect of the physical sciences in the strictest
sense of that term.

Is it not time that we should drop the foolish notions that are very
commonly held because we know nothing about the Middle Ages--and,
therefore, the more easily assume great knowledge--and get back to
appreciate the really marvellous details of educational and scientific
development which are so interesting and of so much significance at this
time?

APPENDIX III

MEDIEVAL POPULARIZATION OF SCIENCE

The idea of collecting general information from many sources, of
bringing it together into an easily available form, so as to save others
labor, of writing it out in compendious fashion, so that it could
readily pass from hand to hand, is likely to be considered typically
modern. As a matter of fact, the Middle Ages furnish us with many
examples of the popularization of science, of the writing of compendia
of various kinds, of the gathering of information to save others the
trouble, and, above all, of the making of what, in the modern time, we
would call encyclopedias. Handbooks of various kinds were issued,
manuals for students and specialists, and many men of broad scholarship
in their time devoted themselves to the task of making the acquisition
of knowledge easy for others. This was true not only for history and
philosophy and literature, but also for science. It is not hard to find
in each century of the Middle Ages some distinguished writer who devoted
himself to this p