lEypenmental  ^Legislation

7

physical  sciences,  that  we  owe  almost  the  whole
progress  of  the  human  race  in  the  last  three
centuries.  Even  moral  and  intellectual  triumphs
may  often  be  traced  back  to  dependence  on
physical  inventions,  and  to  the  incentive  which
they  give  towards  general  activity.  Certainly,
political  and  military  success  is  almost  entirely
dependent  on  the  experimental  sciences.  It  is
difficult  to  discover  that,  as  regards  courage,  our
soldiers  in  Afghanistan  and  Zululand  and  the
Transvaal  are  any  better  than  the  men  whose
countries  they  invade.  But  it  is  the  science  of
the  rifle,  the  shell,  and  the  mountain  gun—science
perfected  by  constant  experimentation  —  which
gives  the  poor  savage  and  even  the  brave  Boer
no  chance  of  ultimate  success  in  resistance.  To
whom  do  we  owe  all  this,  in  its  first  beginning,
but  to  the  great  experimentalist,  the  friar,  Roger
Bacon,  of  Oxford,  our  truest  and  greatest  national
glory,  the  smallest  of  whose  merits  is  that  he  first
mentions  gunpowder  ;  yet  so  little  does  the  English
nation  yet  appreciate  the  sources  of  its  power  and
greatness  that  the  writings  of  Roger  Bacon  lie,  to
a  great  extent,  unprinted  and  unexplored.  It  is
only  among  Continental  scholars  that  Roger  Bacon
is  regarded  as  the  miracle  of  his  age  and  country.
No  doubt  it  is  to  Francis  Bacon,  the  Lord  High
Chancellor  of  England,  that  the  world  generally
attributes  the  inauguration  of  the  new  inductive
era  of  science.  This  is  hardly  the  place  to  endeavour