Nowhere are the
defects of the scholarship of the Middle Ages more pointedly and ably
exhibited than in what he has said of them.
But, although his knowledge in this field was of uncommon quality and
amount, it does not seem to have surpassed his acquisitions in science.
"I have attempted," he says in a striking passage, "with great
diligence, to attain certainty as to what is needful to be known
concerning the processes of alchemy and natural philosophy and
medicine.... And what I have written of the roots [of these sciences]
is, in my judgment, worth far more than all that the other natural
philosophers now alive suppose themselves to know; for in vain, without
these roots, do they seek for branches, flowers, and fruit. And here I
am boastful in words, but not in my soul; for I say this because I
grieve for the infinite error that now exists, and that I may urge you
[the Pope] to a consideration of the truth."[35] Again he says, in
regard to his treatise "De Perspectiva," or On Optics,--"Why should I
conceal the truth? I assert that there is no one among the Latin
scholars who could accomplish, in the space of a year, this work; no,
nor even in ten years.
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