SOURCE: "Roger Bacon," in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. CLVI, No. DCCCXLIX, November, 1894, pp. 610-23.

In the following excerpt, Maxwell summarizes Bacon's significance as an enlightener of the modern mind, emphasizing his role as a persecuted seeker of truth.

The coincidence that Roger Bacon bore, in a time before surnames had come into general use, the same surname that was to be carried to fame four centuries later by "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," has cast into deeper eclipse the reputation of one of the most penetrating thinkers who have from time to time revolted against false teaching and unsound systems of science. Hardly for every hundred persons who have a general idea of the life and works of Francis Bacon of Verulam shall one, be found who could give an outline of those of Roger Bacon the Franciscan. Yet with the fruit of four additional centuries of...