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.
It was, indeed, on this principle of the close interconnection of all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme of reform.

And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in which he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to be remembered.

[Footnote: Cp.

Opus Tertium, c.iv.p.18, omnes scientiae sunt connexae et mutuis se fovent auxiliis sicut partes ejusdem totius, quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non solum propter se sed pro aliis.] It is the motif of the Opus Majus, and it would have been more fully elaborated if he had lived to complete the encyclopaedic work, Scriptum Principale, which he had only begun before his death.