Dante: The Central Man of All the World | Page 8

would seem as if
this picture had its origin in the poet's recollection of that peculiar and

rare phosphorescent condition of the ocean in which luminous points
appear to rise from the breaking waves and, spreading themselves over
the surface of the waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of
stars." This mention of a sea brings to mind the striking fact that Dean
Church has pointed out, viz., when Dante speaks of the Mediterranean,
he speaks not as a historian or an observer of its storms or its smiles but
as a geologist. The Mediterranean is to him: "The greatest valley in
which water stretcheth." (Par. IX, 82.)
So also when he speaks of light he regards it not merely in its beautiful
appearances but in its natural laws (Purg. XV). And when Dante comes
to describe the exact color, say of an apple blossom, his splendid and
unequalled power as a scientific observer of Nature and a poet is most
evident. Ruskin (Mod. Painters III, 226) commenting on the passage:
flowers of a color "less than that of roses but more than that of violets"
(Purg. XXXII, 58) makes this interesting remark: "It certainly would
not be possible in words, to come nearer to the definition of the exact
hue which Dante meant--that of the apple blossom. Had he employed
any simpler color phrase, as 'pale pink' or 'violet pink' or any other such
combined expression, he still could not have completely got at the
delicacy of the hue; he might, perhaps, have indicated its kind, but not
its tenderness; but by taking the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red,
and then enfeebling this with the violet gray he gets, as closely as
language can carry him to the complete rendering of the vision
although it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect beauty ineffable."
These examples of Dante's interest in scientific observation prove his
fitness to be considered a representative of his age in its love for
science. Instead, however, of proposing Dante as a typical example of
the experimental inquiry of his age--you may say that he is _sui
generis_--I shall call forth other witnesses.
First let Albertus Magnus speak. He was distinguished as a theologian
and philosopher and was also renowned as a scientist. In his tenth book
after describing all the trees, plants and herbs then known, he says: "All
that is here set down is the result of our own observation or has been
borrowed from others whom we have known to have written what their

personal experience has confirmed, for in these matters, experience
alone can give certainty (_experimentum solum certificat in talibus_)."
We may be sure that such an investigator showing in his method a
prodigious scientific progress was on the line so successfully followed
by modern natural philosophy. This conclusion is confirmed by
evidence from his other books showing that he did a great deal of
experimental work, especially in chemistry. In his treatise De
Mineralibus, Albertus Magnus keen to observe natural phenomena,
enumerates different properties of natural magnets and states some of
the properties commonly attributed to them.
In his book on Botany he treats of the organic structure and physiology
of plants so accurately as to draw from Meyer, a botanist of the
nineteenth century, this appreciative tribute. "No botanist who lived
before Albert can be compared to him unless Theophrastus, with whom
he was not acquainted: and after him none has painted nature with such
living colors or studied it so profoundly until the time of Conrad
Gesner and Cesalpino"--a high compliment indeed for Albertus for
leadership in science for three centuries. To quote Von Humboldt again,
"I have found in the book of Albertus Magnus, De Natura Locorum,
considerations on the dependence of temperature concurrently on
latitude and elevation and on the effect of different angles of incidence
of the sun's rays in heating the ground, which have excited my
surprise."
Albertus Magnus gains renown also from his distinguished pupil Roger
Bacon who, some think, should have the honor of being regarded as the
father of inductive science--an honor posterity has conferred upon
another of the same family name who lived 300 years later. We, who
wear eye-glasses would be willing, I think, to vote the honor to the
elder Bacon, because if we do not owe to him the discovery of lenses,
we are his debtors for his clarification of the principles of lenses and for
his successful efforts in establishing them on a mathematical basis. In
any event, he was a pioneer in inductive science.
Before gunpowder is known to have been discovered in the West, the
friar Roger Bacon must have made some interesting experiments along

the line of explosives, else he could not have made the following
remarkable