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xxiv INTRODUCTION.

as founded on bad translations of Aristotle (Brewer, Compend. Studii, cap. 8), would be conclusive as to his personal contact with this great man, even though it were not confirmed by reference to Grosseteste's scientific writings, in which Bacon's debt to him is unmistakable. His treatise De Physicis Lineis, Angulis, et Figuris contains passages as to the spherical radia- tion of force, and as to the change in its direction by reflection and refraction, which bear a close resemblance to the lan- guage used many years afterwards by Bacon.

It would appear that, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, there was a stronger impulse towards scientific study in Oxford than in Paris. In the eleventh chapter of the Opus Tertium, when speaking of the science of Optics, Bacon observes, On this science no lectures have as yet been given in Paris, nor anywhere among the Latins, except twice at Oxford.' It is not stated that the lecturer was Grosseteste ; but we may well believe it. It may be supposed that the influence of Adelard of Batlı, the first translator of Euclid, had left its traces. Twenty years before the close of the twelfth century we hear of two Englishmen, Alexander Neckham and Alfred Sershall, lecturing in Paris on the Physics of Aristotle, then recently introduced from the school of translators from Arabic directed by Archbishop Raymond of Toledo.

But the University of Paris, placed nearer the centre of the spiritual forces that swayed mediaeval society, had grown up under the dialectical influences of thcological controversy; and when Bacon went there, perhaps about 1240, he found what is called, vaguely and inaccurately enough, the scholastic philosophy in the fullness of its growth, with the enlarged scope given to it by the recent permission to study the l'hysics, Metaphysics, and Psychology of Aristotle. Its two most prominent representatives were at this time Alexander of Hales and William of Auvergne. Of the methods and the controversies then current Bacon made himself à master, and received the title of doctor. To be able to speak the language of the schools with authority was the first condition of obtain- ing a hearing. But he was not slow to perceive that the men who taught this philosophy were, for the most part, wholly