Si enim Alexander magnam vim pecuniae suppeditavit
Aristoteli, qua conduceret venatores, aucupes, piscatores et alios, quo
instructior accederet ad conscribendam historiam animalium; certe majus
quiddam debetur iis, qui non in saltibus naturae pererrant, sed in
labyrinthis artium viam sibi aperiunt."
Other similar parallelisms of expression on this topic are to be found
in these two authors, but need not be here quoted. Many resemblances in
the words and in the spirit of the philosophy of the two Bacons have
been pointed out, and it has even been supposed that the later of these
two great philosophers borrowed his famous doctrine of "Idols" from the
classification of the four chief hindrances to knowledge by his
predecessor. But the supposition wants foundation, and there is no
reason to suppose that Lord Bacon was acquainted with the works of the
Friar. The Rev. Charles Forster, in his _Mahometanism Unveiled_, a work
of some learning, but more extravagance, after speaking of Roger Bacon
as "strictly and properly an experimentalist of the Saracenic school,"
goes indeed so far as to assert that he "was the undoubted, though
unowned, original when his great namesake drew the materials of his
famous experimental system.
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