221.] It is from this point of view that we must appreciate the observations which he made on the advancement of knowledge.

"It is our duty," he says, "to supply what the ancients have left incomplete, because we have entered into their labours, which, unless we are asses, can stimulate us to achieve better results"; Aristotle corrected the errors of earlier thinkers; Avicenna and Averroes have corrected Aristotle in some matters and have added much that is new; and so it will go on till the end of the world.

And Bacon quotes passages from Seneca's "Physical Inquiries" to show that the acquisition of knowledge is gradual.

Attention has been already called to those passages, and it was shown how perverse it is, on the strength of such remarks, to claim Seneca as a teacher of the doctrine of Progress.

The same claim has been made for Bacon with greater confidence, and it is no less perverse.