encyclopaedia

In the Speculum majus (“The Greater Mirror”; completed 1244), one of the most important of all encyclopaedias, the French medieval scholar Vincent of Beauvais maintained not only that his work should be perused but that the ideas it recorded should be taken to heart and imitated. Alluding to a secondary sense of the word speculum (“mirror”), he implied that his book showed the world what it is and what it should become. This theme, that encyclopaedias can contribute significantly to the improvement of humankind, recurs constantly throughout their long history. A Catalan ecclesiastic and Scholastic philosopher, Ramon Llull, regarded the 13th-century encyclopaedias, together with language and grammar, as instruments for the pursuit of truth. Domenico Bandini, an Italian humanist, planned his Fons memorabilium universi (“The Source of Noteworthy Facts of the Universe”) at the beginning of the 15th century to provide accurate information on any subject to educated men who lacked books and to give edifying lessons to guide them in their lives. Francis Bacon believed that the intellect of the 17th-century individual could be refined by contact with the intellect of the ideal man. Another Englishman, the poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was well aware of this point of view and said in his Preliminary Treatise on Method (1817) that in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, which he was proposing to create,

He added that he intended to convey methodically “the pure and unsophisticated knowledge of the past…to aid the progress of the future.” The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge declared in The Penny Cyclopædia (1833–43) that, although most encyclopaedias attempted to form systems of knowledge, their own would in addition endeavour to

In De disciplinis (1531; “On the Disciplines”) the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives emphasized the encyclopaedia’s role in the pursuit of truth. In Germany of the early 19th century the encyclopaedia was expected to provide the right or necessary knowledge for good society. Probably the boldest claim was that of Alexander Aitchison, who said that his new Encyclopædia Perthensis (1796–1806) was intended to supersede the use of all other English books of reference.