It was no wonder that a man who knew and
employed such wonderful things, who was known, too, to have sought for
artificial gold, should gain the reputation of a wizard, and that his
books should be looked upon with suspicion. As he himself says,--"Many
books are esteemed magic, which are not so, but contain the dignity of
knowledge." And he adds,--"For, as it is unworthy and unlawful for a
wise man to deal with magic, so it is superfluous and unnecessary."[39]
There is a passage in this treatise "On the Nullity of Magic" of
remarkable character, as exhibiting the achievements, or, if not the
actual achievements, the things esteemed possible by the inventors of
the thirteenth century. There is in it a seeming mixture of fancy and of
fact, of childish credulity with more than mere haphazard prophecy of
mechanical and physical results which have been so lately reached in the
progress of science as to be among new things even six centuries after
Bacon's death. Its positiveness of statement is puzzling, when tested by
what is known from other sources of the nature of the discoveries and
inventions of that early time; and were there reason to question Bacon's
truth, it would seem as if he had mistaken his dreams for facts.
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