Compendium of the Study of Theology

plicated questions here raised. I shall not attempt to settle which fragments belong to the proposed Compendium Studii Theologie and which do not, or to determine their order and mutual relations. It is enough to say that what is here published is a fragment of an uncompleted work of which other fragments survive. From the work itself it is clear that it was written in A.D. 1292 (see below, p. 34).

I will proceed to give some account of the contents, and then to make a few remarks upon their importance and significance. In order to make the summary fairly intelligible to readers who are not experts in scholastic philosophy, and to emphasize the essential points, I have not attempted to reproduce all the arguments adduced by Bacon in support of his various conclusions.

The work, as the Preface explains, is divided into two parts, the first of which is to deal with the causes of error, the second with the establishment of truth and the refutation of error. Bacon was more the child of his age than he imagined himself to be.

The rest of the Preface is occupied with a characteristic denunciation of one chief cause of error—the undue reliance upon authority. There is a certain irony in the fact that the writer’s argument in favour of independent thinking as against authority consists chiefly of a series of citations from Scripture, Cicero, Pliny, and Seneca.

PART I.—Chapter I. deals with the “communication of liberal knowledge”. Roger Bacon tells us that he is at last approaching a difficult task which he has long delayed, and apologizes for his resolution to delay no longer in a string of common-places from “Solomon,” Terence, Ovid (a spurious work), Seneca, Sallust, Jerome, Josephus, Alexander (Aphrodisiensis) and Boethius on the undesirability of delay and the desirability of communicating knowledge.

Chapter II. is on the causes of human error. The principal stumbling-blocks in the way of truth (veritatis offendicula) are (1) the excessive influence of “authority,” (2) custom (consuetudinis diuturnitas), (3) vulgar opinion (sensus multitudinis