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The first sign is fruits; which, in the Old Philosophy, were disputations, and isolated contradictions of isolated errors, resulting in not one single discovery for the enrichment and elevation of mankind. The second sign is growth; but under the Old Philosophy, whereas the mechanical arts have grown, the sciences have remained stationary, like images, having admiration and worship but no life nor motion. A third sign, or rather testimony, arises from the confessions of ignorance made by the philosophers themselves, though they would fain excuse themselves by throwing the blame on Nature. The last and most certain sign is derived from the methods; for methods of making things are (potentially) the things themselves; and the old methods are to the new what manual labour is to machine labour; and the old labourer is to the new what a spectator on a tower straining his eyes in the contemplation of a distant hamlet is to the same spectator when he descends from the height to view each object close at hand. Be not misled by the statement that Aristotle and others in old times practised Induction and Experience. That so-called Induction was but an imposture. After they had made their theories they would select their instances to suit their theories; or, if any one of their instances contradicted their theories, they would explain it away by some subtlety, or dismiss it as an exception. In fine it was the custom of Aristotle not to consult Experience as a free adviser but to drag her at his chariot-wheels as a captive.

Train yourselves to understand the real subtlety of things and you will learn to despise the fictitious and disputatious subtleties of words; and freeing yourselves from such follies, you will give yourselves to the task of facilitating (under the auspices of the divine Compassion) the lawful wedlock between the Mind and Nature. Be not like the empiricant which merely collects; nor like the cobweb-weaving theorists who do but spin webs from their own intestines; but imitate the bees which both collect and fashion.

Against the "Naught beyond" of the ancients raise your cry of "More beyond." When they speak of "the not imitable thunderbolt," let us reply (not like the mad Salmoneus but in sober wisdom) that the thunderbolt is "imitable." 1 Let the discovery of the new terrestrial world encourage you to expect the discovery of a new intellectual world, remembering the words of the prophet that "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be multiplied." The fate of Alexander will be ours. The conquests which his contemporaries thought marvellous and likely to surpass the belief of posterity, were described by later writers as nothing more than the natural successes of one who justly dared to despise imaginary perils. Even so our triumphs (for we shall triumph) will be lightly esteemed by those who come after us; justly, when they compare our trifling gains with theirs; unjustly, if they attribute our victory to audacity, rather than to humility and to freedom from that fatal human pride which has lost us everything

1 The reference is to Salmoneus who aspired to imitate the "not imitable thunderbolt" of Jupiter. -Eneid, vi. 585.

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and has hallowed the fluttering fancies of men (volucres meditationes) in

place of the imprint stamped upon things by the divine seal.

Here (said the narrator) the speaker ceased; and the audience conversed together, as men dazzled with excess of light, yet full of hope. Then, turning to me, "And now," asked he, "what say you of this?" "It is right welcome," said I. "If so," said he, "you may perchance preserve some fruit of your travels among us by finding room for this discourse in your writings." "You say well," replied I, "and I will not forget it."

So ends the Redargutio Philosophiarum, one of the most rhetorical, aggressive, and negative of all Bacon's philosophical treatises and, perhaps, for these very reasons, not inferior to any of them in literary interest.

§ 52 "DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM"1 AND THE ASTRONOMICAL TREATISES 2

The third part of the Magna Instauratio3 was to include the Phenomena of the Universe (that is to say, experience of all sorts of phenomena) and a Natural History of such a kind as can serve for the basis of a Natural Philosophy-a History not of bodies merely but of virtues also, “those, I mean, which may be reckoned as it were cardinal, viz. density, rarity, heat, cold, consistency, fluidity, heaviness, lightness, &c." Such a treatise is extant (supposed to have been written after 1608, and certainly written several years before 1622) having for its object the investigation of Density and Rarity; and it is interesting as exhibiting Bacon in the character of an experimenter noting quantitative results, but still more as proving his ignorance of the works of other labourers in the same province (Densi et Rari Historia).4

In the year 1609 was published the Latin treatise "Concerning the Wisdom of the Ancients" (De Sapientia Veterum). We have seen (Cogitata, above, p. 362) that Bacon had rejected after serious consideration the plan of sheltering his new philosophy under the authority of antiquity by imputing it to the earlier Greek Philosophers. But he seems to have entertained genuine belief not only that the early Natural Philosophers

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1 Spedding, Works, vi. 605-764. 2 Ib. iii. 727-779. * See above, p. 347. 4 Spedding, Works, ii. 241-305.

among the Greeks (Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Democritus and the rest) had penetrated far deeper into the secrets of Nature than their successors, but also that in the myths of the Greek religion and in the fables of the Greek poets there lie enshrined physical discoveries and political mysteries. His dedication to the Earl of Salisbury, while depreciating the Author, extols the subject-primaeval antiquity, an object of the highest veneration; parable, "a kind of ark in which the most precious portions of the sciences were deposited;" philosophy, which is, next to religion, "the second grace and ornament of life and the human soul;" and he avows his hope that by his treatise he may "give some help towards the difficulties of life and the secrets of Science."

Accordingly, in the Wisdom of the Ancients, Proteus is matter, captured and constrained by Science; the Giants, rebelling against Jupiter, represent Sedition destroyed by Sovereignty; Perseus is Military Power furnished with the wings of celerity, with the mirror and shield of forethought, and with the helmet of secresy; Atalanta, lured from her course by the golden apples, is a figure of Science seduced by immediate profit from her enterprise of the conquest of Nature; and Cupid is the atom, or rather the appetite and instinct, of primal matter, which, out of Chaos, begot all things. The discourse on this last myth was afterward amplified by Bacon into a separate treatise on the Beginnings and Origins of Things according to the Fables of Cupid and Heaven,1 a summary of which may serve as a specimen of his application of these ancient stories to Science.

Cupid, says the Fable, was born of an egg, which had been laid by Night. This teaches us not only that the instinct of matter (being due to God Himself) is hidden in unsearchable darkness, but also that all knowledge is bred (like Cupid) out of darkness, that is, out of negatives. We learn the cause of anything by rejecting the non-causes.

Again the Fable tells us that Cupid was naked. That is to say, primitive matter must not be endowed by our imaginations with secondary qualities, such qualities as in reality belong not to atoms but to bodies composed of atoms. Those who have thus erroneously invested matter have been guilty of clothing Cupid; some with a veil (those who explain everything by the transformations of one element, water for example); others with a tunic (those who assume a plurality of elements); others with a cloak (those who assume an infinity of first principles each possessed of specific properties). Contrasted with these [false doctrines is the true one, that there is one first, fixed, and invariable material principle: Then follows an exposition of the doctrine of those who have "clothed Cupid," most space being devoted to the doctrine of Parmenides revived by Telesius, viz., that there are two principles of things.

1 Spedding, Works, iii. 65-118.

Of this unfinished tract Mr. Ellis says that it shows Bacon to have obtained a deep insight into the principles of the atomic theory which in his hands becomes a theory of forces only, "much like the theory of Boscovich, who considered that all phenomena might be explained (without matter) on the hypothesis of the existence of a number of centres of force." Probably it was of some of the sayings in this treatise that Leibnitz remarked, "We do well to think highly of Verulam ; for his hard sayings have a deep meaning in them."

If Bacon was guided sometimes wisely by his intuitions in large scientific conjectures as to first principles and possible laws, it must be admitted that in the attempt to form theories on special subjects he was not equally happy; and in many cases he was led away by inexcusable error and inaccuracy. Of this an example is furnished by his treatise on the Flux and Reflux of the Sea (written probably a little before 1612).1 In extenuation of his errors we must remember that in those days the connection between the moon and the tides, though recognised, was not clearly understood, and that no sufficient distinction was made between the undulatory motion of stationary water and the progressive motion of water. Hence Telesius compared the sea to a cauldron which boiled over (thus causing the tides) when heated by the sun, moon, and stars.

Bacon's theory was based on the belief that the earth was fixed and the stars moved westward. Assuming that all things, except the earth, had some westward motion, he supposed that the stars moved quickest; the higher planets less quickly; the moon less quickly than any of the planets: and the water least quickly of all, thus lagging behind the moon. The motions of ebb and flow he explains from the configuration of the earth; and his whole theory depends upon the supposition that the tides of the Pacific do not synchronize with those of the Atlantic. It is one of the most remarkable instances of his extraordinary carelessness that, to establish this fact the key-stone of his theory-he quotes an author (Acosta), who, on the contrary, asserts that the tides do synchronize.

1 Spedding, Works, iii. 39-64.

Still more unfortunate are Bacon's attempts at Astronomy. In 1612 he published a Description of the World of Thought (Descriptio Globi Intellectualis). Dismissing (perhaps as being only fit for a popular and preliminary treatise), the triple division of history in the Advancement of Learning (into ecclesiastical, civil, and natural), he divides history more scientifically (as he does also subsequently in the De Augmentis) into natural and civil; and then, having stated the divisions of Natural History, he devotes the rest of the tract to one of these divisions, the History of Celestial Things, i.e. Astronomy. To this treatise is added another (Thema Coeli), containing Bacon's own provisional theory of Astronomy.2

The work is chiefly remarkable for its neglect of recent astronomical discoveries. He indeed refers briefly to Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's satellites (published together with other discoveries in the Sydereus Nuncius, 1611), but he does not appear to have seen its importance in confirming the theory of Copernicus; and concerning Kepler's Laws (two of which had been published in the De Stella Martis in 1609, and had become known in England in 1610), he is entirely silent. Yet, if he had taken the trouble to make himself acquainted with them (or rather if the occupations of a Solicitor-General aspiring to the place of AttorneyGeneral, had left him leisure for astronomical studies), the adoption by Kepler of the ellipse, as the celestial curve, would have rendered Bacon's complaint at once superfluous and false, that all astronomers alike are prejudiced in favour of the circle as being the only perfect curve, and alone fit for celestial motions.

Nevertheless, there is more excuse than is immediately apparent for Bacon's sweeping condemnation of all existing systems of Astronomy. No system could be called consistent or complete 1 Spedding, Works, iii. 727-768. 2 Ibid. iii, 769-779.

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