SOURCE: "Mediaeval Anticipations of the Modem English Mind—John of Salisbury, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, William of Occam," in British Thought and Thinkers: Introductory Studies, Critical, Biographical and Philosophical, S. C. Griggs and Company, 1880, pp. 30-52.

Morris was Lecturer on Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and an Associate of the Victoria Institute, London. In the following excerpt, he surveys Bacon's accomplishment as the work of a martyr to the cause of scientific and philosophical truth: a "wonder," whose profound works went unappreciated in the "darkness of the Middle Ages" and are superior to those of his descendent, Francis Bacon.

A more striking and personally interesting figure [than John of Salisbury] is that of Roger Bacon. Born in the year 1214, near Ilchester, in Somersetshire, his life extends through nearly the whole of the classic century of scholasticism. And yet, though a student and teacher in the schools, wearing the...