350. Philosophical Teaching. -- Taken as a whole, Bacon's philosophy approximates closely to the earlier scholasticism: for example, he admits plurality of forms,^{1} the existence of a materia spiritualis^{2} and of rationes seminales.^{3} His metaphysics, especially his theory on the universals, deserves to be better known;^{4} it has not been sufficiently analyzed in hitherto published works. There are in the Opus Majus and in the Opus Tertium^{5} passages on the evolution of genera and species and on the hierarchy of forms and matters, in which his latest historian^{6} professes to discover points of resemblance with the Scotist doctrine (329). But Bacon's repeated refutations of all theories claiming numerical unity for matter ("pessimus error") absolve him certainly from holding the Scotist view about materia prima. He notes expressly that pantheism is the logical issue of that dangerous view ("ita omnia erunt unum et idem") and that the unity of matter would involve its infinity. Bacon himself; on the contrary, accentuates individualism in metaphysics, for he admits a specific diversity of matters corresponding to diversity of forms: "Forma differt a forma secundum se, et materia a materia per suas naturas proprias, ita quod diversitas materiae non est a forma sicut nec e converso".^{7}

{1} Opus Tertium, p. 123.

{2} Ibid., p. 121.

{3} GASQUET, Bacon's letter to Clement IV. (English Historical Review, p. 513).

{4} Cf. Opus Majus, i., p. 42. In the De Multiplicatione Specierum there is a curious passage on the action of the universal. The whole treatise is an interesting study on the efficiency of natural agents and the transmission of forces. By species we are to understand the primus effectus agentis (Bridges, ii., p. 410); the species intentionalis is only a class or kind of action, namely, that which is received in a cognitive subject. Bacon teaches that the universal elements of a being produce universal species and the individual element singular species: "sicut rerum quaedam sunt universales, quaedam singulares sic species fiunt ab his et aliis".

{5} Opus Majus, i., pp. 144 sqq.; Opus Tertium, pp. 120-23, 131.

{6} DELORME, in the Dict. Théol. Cath.

{7} Opus Tertium, p. 126.