_ The services which Bacon rendered to letters during the last five
years of his life, amidst ten thousand distractions and
vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the many
years which he had wasted, to use the words of Sir Thomas Bodley,
"on such study as was not worthy of such a student." He commenced
a Digest of the Laws of England, a History of England under the
Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of Natural History, a
Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions
to his Essays. He published the inestimable Treatise De Augmentis
Scientiarum. The very trifles with which he amused himself in
hours of pain and languor bore the mark of his mind. The best
collection of jests in the world is that which he dictated from
memory, without referring to any book, on a day on which illness
had rendered him incapable of serious study.
The great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to be
its martyr. It had occurred to him that snow might be used with
advantage for the purpose of preventing animal substances from
putrefying. On a very cold day, early in the spring of the year
1626, he alighted from his coach near Highgate, in order to try
the experiment. He went into a cottage, bought a fowl, and with
his own hands stuffed it with snow. While thus engaged he felt a
sudden chill, and was soon so much indisposed that it was
impossible for him to return to Gray's Inn. The Earl of Arundel,
with whom he was well acquainted, had a house at Highgate. To
that house Bacon was carried. The Earl was absent; but the
servants who were in charge of the place showed great respect and
attention to the illustrious guest. Here, after an illness of
about a week, he expired early on the morning of Easter-day,
1626. His mind appears to have retained its strength and
liveliness to the end. He did not forget the fowl which had
caused his death. In the last letter that he ever wrote, with
fingers which, as he said, could not steadily hold a pen, he did
not omit to mention that the experiment of the snow had succeeded
"excellently well."
Our opinion of the moral character of this great man has already
been sufficiently explained. Had his life been passed in literary
retirement, he would, in all probability, have deserved to be
considered, not only as a great philosopher, but as a worthy and
good-natured member of society. But neither his principles nor
his spirit were such as could be trusted, when strong temptations
were to be resisted, and serious dangers to be braved.
In his will he expressed with singular brevity, energy, dignity,
and pathos, a mournful consciousness that his actions had not
been such as to entitle him to the esteem of those under whose
observation his life had been passed, and, at the same time, a
proud confidence that his writings had secured for him a high and
permanent place among the benefactors of mankind. So at least we
understand those striking words which have been often quoted, but
which we must quote once more. "For my name and memory, I leave
it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to
the next age."
His confidence was just. From the day of his death his fame has
been constantly and steadily progressive; and we have no doubt
that his name will be named with reverence to the latest ages,
and to the remotest ends of the civilised world.
The chief peculiarity of Bacon's philosophy seems to us to have
been this, that it aimed at things altogether different from
those which his predecessors had proposed to themselves. This was
his own opinion. " Finis scientiarum," says he, "a nemine adhuc
bene positus est."[Novum Organum, Lib. i. Aph. 81.] And again,
"Omnium gravissimus error in deviatione ab ultimo doctrinarum
fine consistit." [De Augmentis, Lib. i.] " Nec ipsa meta," says
he elsewhere, "adhuc ulli, quod sciam, mortalium posita est et
defixa."[Cogitata et visa.] The more carefully his works are
examined, the more clearly, we think, it will appear that this is
the real clue to his whole system, and that he used means
different from those used by other philosophers, because he
wished to arrive at an end altogether different from theirs.
What then was the end which Bacon proposed to himself? It was, to
use his own emphatic expression, "fruit." It was the multiplying
of human enjoyments and the mitigating of human sufferings. It
was "the relief of man's estate." [Advancement of Learning, Book
i.] It was "commodis humanis inservire." [De Augmentis, Lib. vii.
Cap. i.] It was "efficaciter operari ad sublevanda vitae humanae
incommoda." [Ib., Lib. ii. Cap. ii.] It was "dotare vitam humanam
novis inventis et copiis." [Novum Organum, Lib. i., Aph. 81.] It
was "genus humanum novis operibus et potestatibus continuo
dotare." [Cogitata et visa.] This was the object of all his
speculations in every department of science, in natural
philosophy, in legislation, in politics, in morals.
Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrine, Utility and
Progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, and was
content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral
perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more
than theories; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; in
exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It
could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the
comfort of human beings. All the schools contemned that office as
degrading; some censured it as immoral. Once indeed Posidonius, a
distinguished writer of the age of Cicero and Caesar, so far
forgot himself as to enumerate, among the humbler blessings which
mankind owed to philosophy, the discovery of the principle of the
arch, and the introduction of the use of metals. This eulogy was
considered as an affront, and was taken up with proper spirit.
Seneca vehemently disclaims these insulting compliments. [Seneca,
Epist. 90.] Philosophy, according to him, has nothing to do with
teaching men to rear arched roofs over their heads. The true
philosopher does not care whether he has an arched roof or any
roof, Philosophy has nothing to do with teaching men the uses of
metals. She teaches us to be independent of all material
substances, of all mechanical contrivances. The wise man lives
according to nature. Instead of attempting to add to the physical
comforts of his species, he regrets that his lot was not cast in
that golden age when the human race had no protection against the
cold but the skins of wild beasts, no screen from the sun but a
cavern. To impute to such a man any share in the invention or
improvement of a plough, a ship, or a mill is an insult. "In my
own time," says Seneca, "there have been inventions of this sort,
transparent windows, tubes for diffusing warmth equally through
all parts of a building, shorthand, which has been carried to
such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid
speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the
lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to
teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to
form the soul. Non est, inquam, instrumentorum ad usus
necessarios opifex." If the non were left out, this last sentence
would be no bad description of the Baconian philosophy, and
would, indeed, very much resemble several expressions in the
Novum Organum. "We shall next be told," exclaims Seneca, "that
the first shoemaker was a philosopher." For our own part, if we
are forced to make our choice between the first shoemaker and the
author of the three books "On Anger," we pronounce for the
shoemaker. It may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes
have kept millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca
ever kept anybody from being angry.
It is very reluctantly that Seneca can be brought to confess that
any philosopher had ever paid the smallest attention to anything
that could possibly promote what vulgar people would consider as
the well-being of mankind. He labours to clear Democritus from
the disgraceful imputation of having made the first arch, and
Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived the potter's
wheel. He is forced to own that such a thing might happen; and it
may also happen, he tells us, that a philosopher may be swift of
foot. But it is not in his character of philosopher that he
either wins a race or invents a machine. No, to be sure. The
business of a philosopher was to declaim in praise of poverty
with two millions sterling out at usury, to meditate epigrammatic
conceits about the evils of luxury, in gardens which moved the
envy of sovereigns, to rant about liberty, while fawning on the
insolent and pampered freedmen of a tyrant, to celebrate the
divine beauty of virtue with the same pen which had just before
written a defence of the murder of a mother by a son.
From the cant of this philosophy, a philosophy meanly proud of
its own unprofitableness, it is delightful to turn to the lessons
of the great English teacher. We can almost forgive all the
faults of Bacon's life when we read that singularly graceful and
dignified passage: "Ego certe, ut de me ipso, quod res est,
loquar, et in iis quae nunc edo, et in iis quae in posterum
meditor, dignitatem ingenii et nominis mei, si qua sit, saepius
sciens et volens projicio, dum commodis humanis inserviam; quique
architectus fortasse in philosophia et scientiis esse debeam,
etiam operarius, et bajulus, et quidvis demum fio, cum haud pauca
quae omnino fieri necesse sit, alii autem ob innatum superbiam
subterfugiant, ipsi sustineam et exsequar." [De Augmentis, Lib.
vii. Cap. i.] This philanthropia, which, as he said in one of the
most remarkable of his early letters, "was so fixed in his mind,
as it could not be removed," this majestic humility, this
persuasion that nothing can be too insignificant for the
attention of the wisest, which is not too insignificant to give
pleasure or pain to the meanest, is the great characteristic
distinction, the essential spirit of the Baconian philosophy. We
trace it in all that Bacon has written on Physics, on Laws, on
Morals. And we conceive that from this peculiarity all the other
peculiarities of his system directly and almost necessarily
sprang.
The spirit which appears in the passage of Seneca to which we
have referred tainted the whole body of the ancient philosophy
from the time of Socrates downwards, and took possession of
intellects with which that of Seneca cannot for a moment be
compared. It pervades the dialogues of Plato. It may be
distinctly traced in many parts of the works of Aristotle. Bacon
has dropped hints from which it may be inferred that, in his
opinion, the prevalence of this feeling was in a great measure to
be attributed to the influence of Socrates. Our great countryman
evidently did not consider the revolution which Socrates effected
in philosophy as a happy event, and constantly maintained that
the earlier Greek speculators, Democritus in particular, were, on
the whole, superior to their more celebrated successors. [Novum
Organum, Lib. i. Aph. 71, 79. De Augmentis, Lib. iii. Cap. iv. De
principiis, atque originibus. Cogitata et visa. Redargutio
philosophiarum.]
Assuredly if the tree which Socrates planted and Plato watered is
to be judged of by its flowers and leaves, it is the noblest of
trees. But if we take the homely test of Bacon, if we judge of
the tree by its fruits, our opinion of it may perhaps be less
favourable. When we sum up all the useful truths which we owe to
that philosophy, to what do they amount? We find, indeed,
abundant proofs that some of those who cultivated it were men of
the first order of intellect. We find among their writings
incomparable specimens both of dialectical and rhetorical art. We
have no doubt that the ancient controversies were of use, in so
far as they served to exercise the faculties of the disputants;
for there is no controversy so idle that it may not be of use in
this way. But, when we look for something more, for something
which adds to the comforts or alleviates the calamities of the
human race, we are forced to own ourselves disappointed. We are
forced to say with Bacon that this celebrated philosophy ended in
nothing but disputation, that it was neither a vineyard nor an
olive-ground, but an intricate wood of briars and thistles, from
which those who lost themselves in it brought back many scratches
and no food. [Novum Organum, Lib. i. Aph. 73.]
We readily acknowledge that some of the teachers of this
unfruitful wisdom were among the greatest men that the world has
ever seen. If we admit the justice of Bacon's censure, we admit
it with regret, similar to that which Dante felt when he learned
the fate of those illustrious heathens who were doomed to the
first circle of Hell:
"Gran duol mi prese al cuor quando lo 'ntesi,
Perocche gente di molto valore
Conobbi che 'n quel limbo eran sospesi."
But in truth the very admiration which we feel for the eminent philosophers of antiquity forces us to adopt the opinion that their powers were systematically misdirected. For how else could it be that such powers should effect so little for mankind? A pedestrian may show as much muscular vigour on a treadmill as on the highway road. But on the road his vigour will assuredly carry him forward; and on the treadmill he will not advance an inch. The ancient philosophy was a treadmill, not a path. It was made up of revolving questions, of controversies which were always beginning again. It was a contrivance for having much exertion and no progress. We must acknowledge that more than once, while contemplating the doctrines of the Academy and the Portico, even as they appear in the transparent splendour of Cicero's incomparable diction, we have been tempted to mutter with the surly centurion in Persius, "Cur quis non prandeat hoc est?" What is the highest good, whether pain be an evil, whether all things be fated, whether we can be certain of anything, whether we can be certain that we are certain of nothing, whether a wise man can be unhappy, whether all departures from right be equally reprehensible; these, and other questions of the same sort, occupied the brains, the tongues, and the pens of the ablest men in the civilised world during several centuries. This sort of philosophy, it is evident, could not be progressive. It might indeed sharpen and invigorate the minds of those who devoted themselves to it; and so might the disputes of the orthodox Lilliputians and the heretical Blefuscudians about the big ends and the little ends of eggs. But such disputes could add nothing to the stock of knowledge. The human mind accordingly, instead of marching, merely marked time. It took as much trouble as would have sufficed to carry it forward; and yet remained on the same spot. There was no accumulation of truth, no heritage of truth acquired by the labour of one generation and bequeathed to another, to be again transmitted with large additions to a third. Where this philosophy was in the time of Cicero, there it continued to be in the time of Seneca, and there it continued to be in the time of Favorinus. The same sects were still battling with the same unsatisfactory arguments, about the same interminable questions. There had been no want of ingenuity, of zeal, of industry. Every trace of intellectual cultivation was there, except a harvest. There had been plenty of ploughing, harrowing, reaping, threshing. But the garners contained only smut and stubble.
The ancient philosophers did not neglect natural science but they did not cultivate it for the purpose of increasing the power and ameliorating the condition of man. The taint of barrenness had spread from ethical to physical speculations. Seneca wrote largely on natural philosophy, and magnified the importance of that study. But why? Not because it tended to assuage suffering, to multiply the conveniences of life, to extend the empire of man over the material world; but solely because it tended to raise the mind above low cares, to separate it from the body, to exercise its subtilty in the solution of very obscure questions.[Seneca, Nat. Quaest. praef. Lib. iii.] Thus natural philosophy was considered in the light merely of a mental exercise. It was made subsidiary to the art of disputation; and it consequently proved altogether barren of useful discoveries.
There was one sect which, however absurd and pernicious some of its doctrines may have been, ought, it should seem, to have merited an exception from the general censure which Bacon has pronounced on the ancient schools of wisdom. The Epicurean, who referred all happiness to bodily pleasure, and all evil to bodily pain, might have been expected to exert himself for the purpose of bettering his own physical condition and that of his neighbours. But the thought seems never to have occurred to any member of that school. Indeed their notion, as reported by their great poet, was, that no more improvements were to be expected in the arts which conduce to the comfort of life.
"Ad victum quae flagitat usus
Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata."
This contented despondency, this disposition to admire what has been done, and to expect that nothing more will be done, is strongly characteristic of all the schools which preceded the school of Fruit and Progress. Widely as the Epicurean and the Stoic differed on most points, they seem to have quite agreed in their contempt for pursuits so vulgar as to be useful. The philosophy of both was a garrulous, declaiming, canting, wrangling philosophy. Century after century they continued to repeat their hostile war-cries, Virtue and Pleasure; and in the end it appeared that the Epicurean had added as little to the quantity of pleasure as the Stoic to the quantity of virtue.
It is on the pedestal of Bacon, not on that of Epicurus, that those noble lines ought to be inscribed
"0 tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen
Qui primus potuisti, illustrans commoda vitae."
In the fifth century Christianity had conquered Paganism, and Paganism had infected Christianity. The Church was now victorious and corrupt. The rites of the Pantheon had passed into her worship, the subtilties of the Academy into her creed. In an evil day, though with great pomp and solemnity,--we quote the language of Bacon,--was the ill-starred alliance stricken between the old philosophy and the new faith. [Cogitata et visa.] Questions widely different from those which had employed the ingenuity of Pyrrho and Carneades, but just as subtle, just as interminable, and just as unprofitable, exercised the minds of the lively and voluble Greeks. When learning began to revive in the West, similar trifles occupied the sharp and vigorous intellects of the Schoolmen. There was another sowing of the wind, and another reaping of the whirlwind. The great work of improving the condition of the human race was still considered as unworthy of a man of learning. Those who undertook that task, if what they effected could be readily comprehended, were despised as mechanics; if not, they were in danger of being burned as conjurers.
There cannot be a stronger proof of the degree in which the human mind had been misdirected than the history of the two greatest events which took place during the middle ages. We speak of the invention of Gunpowder and of the invention of Printing. The dates of both are unknown. The authors of both are unknown. Nor was this because men were too rude and ignorant to value intellectual superiority. The inventor of gunpowder appears to have been contemporary with Petrarch and Boccaccio. The inventor of printing was certainly contemporary with Nicholas the Fifth, with Cosmo de' Medici, and with a crowd of distinguished scholars. But the human mind still retained that fatal bent which it had received two thousand years earlier. George of Trebisond and Marsilio Ficino would not easily have been brought to believe that the inventor of the printing-press had done more for mankind than themselves, or than those ancient writers of whom they were the enthusiastic votaries.
At length the time arrived when the barren philosophy which had, during so many ages, employed the faculties of the ablest of men, was destined to fall. It had worn many shapes. It had mingled itself with many creeds. It had survived revolutions in which empires, religions, languages, races, had perished. Driven from its ancient haunts, it had taken sanctuary in that Church which it had persecuted, and had, like the daring fiends of the poet, placed its seat
"next the seat of God,
And with its darkness dared affront his light."
Words, and more words, and nothing but words, had been all the fruit of all the toil of all the most renowned sages of sixty generations. But the days of this sterile exuberance were numbered.
Many causes predisposed the public mind to a change. The study of a great variety of ancient writers, though it did not give a right direction to philosophical research, did much towards destroying that blind reverence for authority which had prevailed when Aristotle ruled alone. The rise of the Florentine sect of Platonists, a sect to which belonged some of the finest minds of the fifteenth century, was not an unimportant event. The mere substitution of the Academic for the Peripatetic philosophy would indeed have done little good. But anything was better than the old habit of unreasoning servility. It was something to have a choice of tyrants. "A spark of freedom," as Gibbon has justly remarked, "was produced by this collision of adverse servitude."
Other causes might be mentioned. But it is chiefly to the great reformation of religion that we owe the great reformation of philosophy. The alliance between the Schools and the Vatican had for ages been so close that those who threw off the dominion of the Vatican could not continue to recognise the authority of the Schools. Most of the chiefs of the schism treated the Peripatetic philosophy with contempt, and spoke of Aristotle as if Aristotle had been answerable for all the dogmas of Thomas Aquinas. "Nullo apud Lutheranos philosophiam esse in pretio," was a reproach which the defenders of the Church of Rome loudly repeated, and which many of the Protestant leaders considered as a compliment. Scarcely any text was more frequently cited by the reformers than that in which St. Paul cautions the Colossians not to let any man spoil them by philosophy. Luther, almost at the outset of his career, went so far as to declare that no man could be at once a proficient in the school of Aristotle and in that of Christ. Zwingle, Bucer, Peter Martyr, Calvin, held similar language. In some of the Scotch universities, the Aristotelian system was discarded for that of Ramus. Thus, before the birth of Bacon, the empire of the scholastic philosophy had been shaken to its foundations. There was in the intellectual world an anarchy resembling that which in the political world often follows the overthrow of an old and deeply rooted Government. Antiquity, prescription, the sound of great names, have ceased to awe mankind. The dynasty which had reigned for ages was at an end; and the vacant throne was left to be struggled for by pretenders.
The first effect of this great revolution was, as Bacon most justly observed, [De Augmentis, Lib. i.] to give for a time an undue importance to the mere graces of style. The new breed of scholars, the Aschams and Buchanans, nourished with the finest compositions of the Augustan age, regarded with loathing the dry, crabbed, and barbarous diction of respondents and opponents. They were far less studious about the matter of their writing than about the manner. They succeeded in reforming Latinity; but they never even aspired to effect a reform in Philosophy.
At this time Bacon appeared. It is altogether incorrect to say, as has often been said, that he was the first man who rose up against the Aristotelian philosophy when in the height of his power. The authority of that philosophy had, as we have shown, received a fatal blow long before he was born. Several speculators, among whom Ramus is the best known, had recently attempted to form new sects. Bacon's own expressions about the state of public opinion in the time of Luther are clear and strong: "Accedebat," says he, "odium et contemptus, illis ipsis temporibus ortus erga Scholasticos." And again, "Scholasticorum doctrina despectui prorsus haberi coepit tanquam aspera et barbara." [Both these passages are in the first book of the De Augmentis.] The part which Bacon played in this great change was the part, not of Robespierre, but of Bonaparte. The ancient order of things had been subverted. Some bigots still cherished with devoted loyalty the remembrance of the fallen monarchy, and exerted themselves to effect a restoration. But the majority had no such feeling. Freed, yet not knowing how to use their freedom, they pursued no determinate course, and had found no leader capable of conducting them.
That leader at length arose. The philosophy which he taught was essentially new. It differed from that of the celebrated ancient teachers, not merely in method, but also in object. Its object was the good of mankind, in the sense in which the mass of mankind always have understood and always will understand the word good. "Meditor," said Bacon, "instaurationem philosophiae ejusmodi quae nihil inanis aut abstracti habeat, quaeque vitae humanae conditiones in melius provehat." [Redargutio Philosophiarum.]
The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of his predecessors cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by comparing his views on some important subjects with those of Plato. We select Plato, because we conceive that he did more than any other person towards giving to the minds of speculative men that bent which they retained till they received from Bacon a new impulse in a diametrically opposite direction.
It is curious to observe how differently these great men estimated the value of every kind of knowledge. Take Arithmetic for example. Plato, after speaking slightly of the convenience of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary transactions of life, passes to what he considers as a far more important advantage. The study of the properties of numbers, he tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things. [Plato's Republic, Book vii.]
Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge, only on account of its uses with reference to that visible and tangible world which Plato so much despised. He speaks with scorn of the mystical arithmetic of the later Platonists, and laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere matters of curiosity, powers the whole exertion of which is required for purposes of solid advantage. He advises arithmeticians to leave these trifles, and to employ themselves in framing convenient expressions, which may be of use in physical researches. [De Augmentis, Lib. iii. Cap. 6.]
The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study of arithmetic led him to recommend also the study of mathematics. The vulgar crowd of geometricians, he says, will not understand him. They have practice always in view. They do not know that the real use of the science is to lead men to the knowledge of abstract, essential, eternal truth. [Plato's Republic, Book vii.] Indeed, if we are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this feeling so far that he considered geometry as degraded by being applied to any purpose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed machines of extraordinary power on mathematical principles. [Plutarch, Sympos. viii. and Life of Marcellus. The machines of Archytas are also mentioned by Aulus Gellius and Diogenes Laertius.] Plato remonstrated with his friend, and declared that this was to degrade a noble intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit only for carpenters and wheelwrights. The office of geometry, he said, was to discipline the mind, not to minister to the base wants of the body. His interference was successful; and from that time, according to Plutarch, the science of mechanics was considered as unworthy of the attention of a philosopher.
Archimedes in a later age imitated and surpassed Archytas. But even Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce anything useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements, as trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after intense application to the higher parts of his science.
The opinion of Bacon on this subject was diametrically opposed to that of the ancient philosophers. He valued geometry chiefly, if not solely, on account of those uses, which to Plato appeared so base. And it is remarkable that the longer Bacon lived the stronger this feeling became. When in 1605 he wrote the two books on the Advancement of Learning, he dwelt on the advantages which mankind derived from mixed mathematics; but he at the same time admitted that the beneficial effect produced by mathematical study on the intellect, though a collateral advantage, was "no less worthy than that which was principal and intended." But it is evident that his views underwent a change. When, near twenty years later, he published the De Augmentis, which is the Treatise on the Advancement of Learning, greatly expanded and carefully corrected, he made important alterations in the part which related to mathematics. He condemned with severity the high, pretensions of the mathematicians, "delicias et fastum mathematicorum." Assuming the well-being of the human race to be the end of knowledge, [Usui et commodis hominum consulimus.] he pronounced that mathematical science could claim no higher rank than that of an appendage or auxiliary to other sciences. Mathematical science, he says, is the handmaid of natural philosophy; she ought to demean herself as such; and he declares that he cannot conceive by what ill chance it has happened that she presumes to claim precedence over her mistress. He predicts-- a prediction which would have made Plato shudder--that as more and more discoveries are made in physics, there will be more and more branches of mixed mathematics. Of that collateral advantage the value of which, twenty years before, he rated so highly, he says not one word. This omission cannot have been the effect of mere inadvertence. His own treatise was before him. From that treatise he deliberately expunged whatever was favourable to the study of pure mathematics, and inserted several keen reflections on the ardent votaries of that study. This fact, in our opinion, admits of only one explanation. Bacon's love of those pursuits which directly tend to improve the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, become immoderate. He was afraid of using any expression which might have the effect of inducing any man of talents to employ in speculations, useful only to the mind of the speculator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the empire of man over matter. [Compare the passage relating to mathematics in the Second Book of the Advancement of Learning with the De Augmentis Lib. iii. Cap. 6.] If Bacon erred here, we must acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, like those Roman matrons who swallowed abortives in order to preserve their shapes, takes pains to be barren for fear of being homely. _