Albertus Magnus, "the ape of Aristotle"
(1193-1280), left for a season the three great questions of the
existence of universals, of the modes of the existence of species and
genus, and of their place in or out of the bosom of the individuals,
and executed a compilation of such physical facts as had been then
discovered.[90] A more distinctly encyclopaedic work was the book of
Vincent de Beauvais (_d._ 1264), called _Speculum naturale, morale,
doctrinale, et historiale_--a compilation from Aquinas in some parts,
and from Aristotle in others. Hallam mentions three other compilations
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and observes that their
laborious authors did not much improve the materials which they had
amassed in their studies, though they sometimes arranged them
conveniently. In the mediaeval period, as he remarks, the want of
capacity to discern probable truths was a very great drawback from the
value of their compilations.[91]

Far the most striking production of the thirteenth century in this kind
was the _Opus Majus_ of Roger Bacon (1267), of which it has been said
that it is at once the Encyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of that
age;[92] at once a summary of knowledge, and the suggestion of a truer
method. This, however, was merely the introductory sketch to a vaster
encyclopaedic work, the _Compendium Philosophiae_, which was not
perfected. "In common with minds of great and comprehensive grasp, his
vivid perception of the intimate relationship of the different parts of
philosophy, and his desire to raise himself from the dead level of
every individual science, induced Bacon to grasp at and embrace the
whole."[93] In truth, the encyclopaedic spirit was in the air throughout
the thirteenth century. It was the century of books bearing the
significant titles of Summa, or Universitas, or Speculum.

The same spirit revived towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In
1541 a book was published at Basel by one Ringelberg, which first took
the name of Cyclopaedia, that has since then become so familiar a word in
Western Europe. This was followed within sixty years by several other
works of the same kind. The movement reached its height in a book which
remained the best in its order for a century. A German, one J.H. Alsted
(1588-1638), published in 1620 an _Encyclopaedia scientiarum omnium_. A
hundred years later the illustrious Leibnitz pronounced it a worthy task
to perfect and amend Alsted's book. Wha