tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[13] from his life-long friend, Fabricius, to Melanchthon, announcing this event, states: "We lost, on November 21st, that distinguished ornament of our Fatherland, Georgius Agricola, a man of eminent intellect, of culture and of judgment. He attained the age of 62. He who since the days of childhood had enjoyed robust health was carried off by a four-days' fever. He had previously suffered from no disease except inflammation of the eyes, which he brought upon himself by untiring study and insatiable reading.... I know that you loved the soul of this man, although in many of his opinions, more especially in religious and spiritual welfare, he differed in many points from our own. For he despised our Churches, and would not be with us in the Communion of the Blood of Christ. Therefore, after his death, at the command of the Prince, which was given to the Church inspectors and carried out by Tettelbach as a loyal servant, burial was refused him, and not until the fourth day was he borne away to Zeitz and interred in the Cathedral.... I have always admired the genius of this man, so distinguished in our sciences and in the whole realm of Philosophy—yet I wonder at his religious views, which were compatible with reason, it is true, and were dazzling, but were by no means compatible with truth.... He would not tolerate with patience that anyone should discuss ecclesiastical matters with him." This action of the authorities in denying burial to one of their most honoured citizens, who had been ever assiduous in furthering the welfare of the community, seems strangely out of joint. Further, the Elector Augustus, although a Protestant Prince, was Agricola's warm friend, as evidenced by his letter of but a few months before (see p. xv). However, Catholics were then few in number at Chemnitz, and the feeling ran high at the time, so possibly the Prince was afraid of public disturbances. Hofmann[14] explains this occurrence in the following words:—"The feelings of Chemnitz citizens, who were almost exclusively Protestant, must certainly be taken into account. They may have raised objections to the solemn interment of a Catholic in the Protestant Cathedral Church of St. Jacob, which had, perhaps, been demanded by his relatives, and to which, according to the custom of the time, he would have been entitled as Burgomaster. The refusal to sanction the interment aroused, more especially in the Catholic world, a painful sensation."

A brass memorial plate hung in the Cathedral at Zeitz had already disappeared in 1686, nor have the cities of his birth or residence ever shown any appreciation of this man, whose work more deserves their gratitude than does that of the multitude of soldiers whose monuments decorate every village and city square. It is true that in 1822 a marble tablet was placed behind the altar in the Church of St. Jacob in Chemnitz, but even this was removed to the Historical Museum later on.

He left a modest estate, which was the subject of considerable litigation by his descendants, due to the mismanagement of the guardian. Hofmann has succeeded in tracing the descendants for two generations, down to 1609, but the line is finally lost among the multitude of other Agricolas.

To deduce Georgius Agricola's character we need not search beyond the discovery of his steadfast adherence to the religion of his fathers amid the bitter storm of Protestantism around him, and need but to remember at the same time that for twenty-five years he was entrusted with elective positions of an increasingly important character in this same community. No man could have thus held the respect of his countrymen unless he were devoid of bigotry and possessed of the highest sense of integrity, justice, humanity, and patriotism.

AGRICOLA'S INTELLECTUAL ATTAINMENTS AND POSITION IN SCIENCE.

Agricola's education was the most thorough that his times afforded in the classics, philosophy, medicine, and sciences generally. Further, his writings disclose a most exhaustive knowledge not only of an extraordinary range of classical literature, but also of obscure manuscripts buried in the public libraries of Europe. That his general learning was held to be of a high order is amply evidenced from the correspondence of the other scholars of his time—Erasmus, Melanchthon, Meurer, Fabricius, and others.

Our more immediate concern, however, is with the advances which were due to him in the sciences of Geology, Mineralogy, and Mining Engineering. No appreciation of these attainments can be conveyed to the reader unless he has some understanding of the dearth of knowledge in these sciences prior to Agricola's time. We have in Appendix B given a brief review of the literature extant at this period on these subjects. Furthermore, no appreciation of Agricola's contribution to science can be gained without a study of De Ortu et Causis and De Natura Fossilium, for while De Re Metallica is of much more general interest, it contains but incidental reference to Geology and Mineralogy. Apart from the book of Genesis, the only attempts at fundamental explanation of natural phenomena were those of the Greek Philosophers and the Alchemists. Orthodox beliefs Agricola scarcely mentions; with the Alchemists he had no patience. There can be no doubt, however, that his views are greatly coloured by his deep classical learning. He was in fine to a certain distance a follower of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Strato, and other leaders of the Peripatetic school. For that matter, except for the muddy current which the alchemists had introduced into this already troubled stream, the whole thought of the learned world still flowed from the Greeks. Had he not, however, radically departed from the teachings of the Peripatetic school, his work would have been no contribution to the development of science. Certain of their teachings he repudiated with great vigour, and his laboured and detailed arguments in their refutation form the first battle in science over the results of observation versus inductive speculation. To use his own words: "Those things which we see with our eyes and understand by means of our senses are more clearly to be demonstrated than if learned by means of reasoning."[15] The bigoted scholasticism of his times necessitated as much care and detail in refutation of such deep-rooted beliefs, as would be demanded to-day by an attempt at a refutation of the theory of evolution, and in consequence his works are often but dry reading to any but those interested in the development of fundamental scientific theory.

In giving an appreciation of Agricola's views here and throughout the footnotes, we do not wish to convey to the reader that he was in all things free from error and from the spirit of his times, or that his theories, constructed long before the atomic theory, are of the clear-cut order which that basic hypothesis has rendered possible to later scientific speculation in these branches. His statements are sometimes much confused, but we reiterate that their clarity is as crystal to mud in comparison with those of his predecessors—and of most of his successors for over two hundred years.