On the Secret Works of Art and Nature and the Nullity of Magic

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to improve all sciences through experiments and to bring them closer to perfection. His remaining writings show us with what an insightful eye and penetrating understanding he surveyed and fathomed them all, with what discoveries he enriched them, and how he was in possession of the finest inventions * that were robbed from following times by the tyranny of his superiors and the ignorance of his contemporaries, and which had to be sought again with effort by them, and newly invented. For the experiments that were conducted by him in all parts of natural philosophy and mathematics, and which only very few of the learned were capable of grasping in these very ignorant times, brought upon him the most shameful accusations of magic, condemned by the Church. People used this pretext to forbid him from teaching the youth and to prohibit his writings from being sent out of the monastery to anyone other than the Pope. Bacon did not dare, therefore, to comply with Pope Clement IV, even when he requested his writings as a Cardinal, until he learned that he had been elected to the Roman chair. In this Pope, Bacon had a great

• e.g., of magnifying glasses, telescopes, and burning glasses; of gunpowder, a gold tincture, etc.