It was not until the later middle age that any attempt was made to present knowledge as a whole.

Albertus Magnus, "the ape of Aristotle" (1193-1280), left for a season the three great questions of the existence of universals, of the modes of the existence of species and genus, and of their place in or out of the bosom of the individuals, and executed a compilation of such physical facts as had been then discovered.[90] A more distinctly encyclopaedic work was the book of Vincent de Beauvais (_d._ 1264), called _Speculum naturale, morale, doctrinale, et historiale_--a compilation from Aquinas in some parts, and from Aristotle in others.

Hallam mentions three other compilations of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and observes that their laborious authors did not much improve the materials which they had amassed in their studies, though they sometimes arranged them conveniently.

In the mediaeval period, as he remarks, the want of capacity to discern probable truths was a very great drawback from the value of their compilations.[91] Far the most striking production of the thirteenth century in this kind was the _Opus Majus_ of Roger Bacon (1267), of which it has been said that it is at once the Encyclopaedia and the Novum Organum of that age;[92] at once a summary of knowledge, and the suggestion of a truer method.

This, however, was merely the introductory sketch to a vaster encyclopaedic work, the _Compendium Philosophiae_, which was not perfected.