One remarkable man, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, [Footnote: c. A.D. 1210-92. Of Bacon's Opus Majus the best and only complete edition is that of J. H. Bridges, 2 vols. 1897 (with an excellent Introduction). The associated works, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium, have been edited by Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Inedita, 1859.]who stands on an isolated pinnacle of his own in the Middle Ages, deserves particular consideration. It has been claimed for him that he announced the idea of Progress; he has even been compared to Condorcet or Comte. Such claims are based on passages taken out of their context and indulgently interpreted in the light of later theories. They are not borne out by an examination of his general conception of the universe and the aim of his writings. His aim was to reform higher education and introduce into the universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular studies. His chief work, the "Opus Majus," was written for this purpose, to which his exposition of his own discoveries was subordinate. It was addressed and sent to Pope Clement IV., who had asked Bacon to give him an account of his researches, and was designed to persuade the Pontiff of the utility of science from an ecclesiastical point of view, and to induce him to sanction an intellectual reform, which without the approbation of the Church would at that time have been impossible. With great ingenuity and resourcefulness he sought to show that the studies to which he was devoted--mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry--were indispensable to an intelligent study of theology and Scripture. Though some of his arguments may have been urged simply to capture the Pope's good-will, there can be no question that Bacon was absolutely sincere in his view that theology was the mistress (dominatrix) of the sciences and that their supreme value lay in being necessary to it. It was, indeed, on this principle of the close interconnection of all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme of reform. And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in which he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to be remembered. [Footnote: Cp. Opus Tertium, c. iv. p. 18, omnes scientiae sunt connexae et mutuis se fovent auxiliis sicut partes ejusdem totius, quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non solum propter se sed pro aliis.] It is the motif of the Opus Majus, and it would have been more fully elaborated if he had lived to complete the encyclopaedic work, Scriptum Principale, which he had only begun before his death. His other title to fame is well-known. He realised, as no man had done before him, the importance of the experimental method in investigating the secrets of nature, and was an almost solitary pioneer in the paths to which his greater namesake, more than three hundred years later, was to invite the attention of the world.