All honor to him! honor to the schoolmen of the Middle Ages! to the
men who kept the traditions of wisdom alive, who trimmed the wick of the
lamp of learning when its flame was flickering, and who, when its light
grew dim and seemed to be dying out, supplied it with oil hardly
squeezed by their own hands, drop by drop, from the scanty olives which
they had gathered from the eternal tree of Truth! In these later days
learning has become cheap. What sort of scholar must he now be, who
should be worthy to be put into comparison with the philosopher of the
thirteenth century?
The general scheme of Bacon's system of philosophy was at once simple
and comprehensive. The scope of his thought had a breadth uncommon in
his or in any time. In his view, the object of all philosophy and human
learning was to enable men to attain to the wisdom of God; and to this
end it was to be subservient absolutely, and relatively so far as
regarded the Church, the government of the state, the conversion of
infidels, and the repression of those who could not be converted. All
wisdom was included in the Sacred Scriptures, if properly understood and
explained. "I believe," said he, "that the perfection of philosophy is
to raise it to the state of a Christian law.
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