as if it came from the Latin moecha, and derives economica from oequus, showing that he, like most other Western scholars, was ignorant even of the Greek letters.[33] Michael Scot, in respect to whose translations Bacon speaks with merited contempt, exhibits the grossest ignorance, in his version from the Arabic of Aristotle’s History of Animals, for example, a passage in which Aristotle speaks of taming the wildest animals, and says, “Beneficio enim mitescunt, veluti crocodilorum genus afficitur erga sacerdotem a quo enratur ut alantur,” ("They become mild with kind treatment, as crocodiles toward the priest who provides them with food,”) is thus unintelligibly rendered by him:  “Genus autem karoluoz et hirdon habet pacem lehhium et domesticatur cum illo, quoniam cogitat de suo cibo.” [34] Such a medley makes it certain that he knew neither Greek nor Arabic, and was willing to compound a third language, as obscure to his readers as the original was to him.  Bacon points out many instances of this kind; and it is against such errors—­errors so destructive to all learning—­that he inveighs with the full force of invective, and protests with irresistible arguments.  His acquirements in Greek and in Hebrew prove that he had devoted long labor to the study of these languages, and that he understood them far better than many scholars who made more pretence of learning.  Nowhere are the defects of the scholarship of the Middle Ages more pointedly and ably exhibited than in what he has said of them.

But, although his knowledge in this field was of uncommon quality and amount, it does not seem to have surpassed his acquisitions in science.  “I have attempted,” he says in a striking passage, “with great diligence, to attain certainty as to what is needful to be known concerning the processes of alchemy and natural philosophy and medicine....  And what I have written of the roots [of these sciences] is, in my judgment, worth far more than all that the other natural philosophers now alive suppose themselves to know; for in vain, without these roots, do they seek for branches, flowers, and fruit.  And here I am boastful in words, but not in my soul; for I say this because I grieve for the infinite error that now exists, and that I may urge you [the Pope] to a consideration of the truth."[35] Again he says, in regard to his treatise “De Perspectiva,” or On Optics,—­“Why should I conceal the truth?  I assert that there is no one among the Latin scholars who could accomplish, in the space of a year, this work; no, nor even in ten years."[36] In mathematics, in chemistry, in optics, in mechanics, he was, if not superior, at least equal, to the best of his contemporaries.  His confidence in his own powers was the just result of self-knowledge and self-respect.  Natural genius, and the accumulations of forty years of laborious study pursued with a method superior to that which guided the studies of others, had set him at the head of the learned men of his time; and he was great enough to know and to claim his place.  He had the self-devotion of enthusiasm, and its ready, but dignified boldness, based upon the secure foundation of truth.