of the unity of the world by the establishment of a common order, the unification of mankind in a single world-embracing political organism.  The term “world,” orbis (terrarum), which imperial poets use freely in speaking of the Empire, is more than a mere poetical or patriotic exaggeration; it expresses the idea, the unrealised ideal of the Empire.  There is a stone from Halicarnassus in the British Museum, on which the idea is formally expressed from another point of view.  The inscription is of the time of Augustus, and the Emperor is designated as “saviour of the community of mankind.”  There we have the notion of the human race apprehended as a whole, the ecumenical idea, imposing upon Rome the task described by Virgil as regere imperio populos, and more humanely by Pliny as the creation of a single fatherland for all the peoples of the world. [Footnote:  Pliny, Nat.  Hist. iii. 6. 39.]

This idea, which in the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages took the form of a universal State and a universal Church, passed afterwards into the conception of the intercohesion of peoples as contributors to a common pool of civilisation—­a principle which, when the idea of Progress at last made its appearance in the world, was to be one of the elements in its growth.

3.

One remarkable man, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, [Footnote:  c.  A.D. 1210-92.  Of Bacon’s Opus Majus the best and only complete edition is that of J. H. Bridges, 2 vols. 1897 (with an excellent Introduction).  The associated works, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium, have been edited by Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Inedita, 1859.]who stands on an isolated pinnacle of his own in the Middle Ages, deserves particular consideration.  It has been claimed for him that he announced the idea of Progress; he has even been compared to Condorcet or Comte.  Such claims are based on passages taken out of their context and indulgently interpreted in the light of later theories.  They are not borne out by an examination of his general conception of the universe and the aim of his writings.

His aim was to reform higher education and introduce into the universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular studies.  His chief work, the “Opus Majus,” was written for this purpose, to which his exposition of his own discoveries was subordinate.  It was addressed and sent to Pope Clement iv., who had asked Bacon to give him an account of his researches, and was designed to persuade the Pontiff of the utility of science from an ecclesiastical point of view, and to induce him to sanction an intellectual reform, which without the approbation of the Church would at that time have been impossible.  With great ingenuity and resourcefulness he sought to show that the studies to which he was devoted—­mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry—­were indispensable to an intelligent study of theology and Scripture.  Though some of his arguments may have been urged simply to capture the Pope’s good-will, there can be no question that Bacon was absolutely sincere in his view that theology was the mistress (dominatrix) of the sciences and that their supreme value lay in being necessary to it.