have yet influenced the world! Men are still writing Christian Geology, and Christian Phrenology; and, I suppose, Mohammedan Phrenology, and Jewish Phrenology: and the facts of Mesmerism are perverted to suit every one's theological opinions; - to support a belief in ghosts, or in miracles, or in the Thirty-nine Articles. Some are running after new revelations; others denouncing all new revelations, and clinging to old ones. The Rev. G. Sanby's interesting work on "Mesmerism and its Opponents," in which he endeavors to support miracles* by limiting Christ's natural powers and insight, is an instance. Men do not perceive that the arguments which tell against a new revelation tell with equal force against the old.

Lord

Sir Charles Bell set about proving a design and a designer from the hand. Another gentleman would infer a God from an organ in the brain. Brougham holds out Paley, and the logic of the watch story, and declares that mind does not age with the body, but is independent of it; all which is most fanciful, and wholly fallacious. You remember that De Maistre, a Roman Catholic writer of celebrity, has attacked Bacon's philosophy in two goodly volumes, as Materialism and Atheism. Bacon has told us how necessary it was to use disguise; and I fear this masking was carried further than was absolutely necessary for his own. security, and for engaging a hearing † for his own philosophy. Be this as it may, De Maistre has torn † Appendix R.

*Appendix Q.

off the disguise: and while endeavoring to injure Bacon's reputation. and do a service to the Church, has done the best thing he could have done for philosophy: and only what, doubtless, Bacon anticipated when he said that he had held up a light in the obscurity of philosophy which would be seen centuries after he was dead. He laments that he cannot dismiss all art and circumstance, and exhibit the matter naked to us, that we might be enabled to use our judgment. Thinkest thou,” he says, "that when all the accesses and motions of all minds are besieged and obstructed by the obscurest Idols, deeply rooted and branded in, the sincere and polished areas present themselves in the true and native rays of things: but as the delirium of phrenetics is subdued by art and ingenuity, but by force and contention raised to fury: so, in this universal insanity, we must use moderation." When a boy at college, he was impressed with what he repeats when he was Chancellor. “In the Universities," he says, "they learn nothing but to believe: first, to believe that others know that which they know not: and after, themselves know that which they know not. They are like a becalmed ship: they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal." He speaks of the fictions of those who have not feared to deduce and confirm the truth of the Christian religion by the principle and authority of philosophers. "In short," he says, you may find all access to any species of phi

losophy, however pure, intercepted by the ignorance of divines."

Bacon seems to mean by atheism, the mere dwelling on "second causes scattered," the sequence of events, as if brought about by a chance; and hardly believes in the existence of atheism;that any one can be so stupid as not to perceive the necessity of a fundamental matter, form, and law; and says therefore that even that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demonstrate religion: that is, the school of Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus. The forms and laws of nature Bacon sometimes calls the Mind of Nature; and thus he is excused for exclaiming, what would otherwise from him be ridiculous and inconsistent, that he "had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind," or an affair of chance; which would be nonsense, and clearly impossible. But in his Essay on Superstition, he speaks approvingly of atheism, meaning the not believing the dogmas of the Church, as leaving a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation. "And we see," he says, "the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times; but superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition, wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to

practice in a reversed order." If this be true in these times, it would seem that all statesmen should encourage atheism, as a means of preserving order and good conduct.

Bacon protests against retributive judgments, and against any interference with the laws of nature, which he considers fixed and eternal; and the properties of matter to be "self-sustained," "as an adamantine necessity of nature," and the primitive matter to be "the cause of causes, itself without a cause." "For there is a certain limit of causes in nature; and it would argue levity and inexperience in a philosopher to require or imagine a cause for the last and positive power and law of nature, as much as it would not to demand a cause in those that are subordinate."* What can be inferred from this but that to require a cause beyond nature, and out of nature (which includes both second causes and the first cause; but, in fact, there is but one, the first cause; and what is called second cause is but the form and sequence), argues levity and inexperience? but, nevertheless, he added to the cause and causes ("God excepted"). That was to save his position and chancellorship; and he left the inconsistency to be unravelled in future time, when the age was ripe for the whole truth being clearly

lerstood in which times we now live. Bacon s care, again and again, to show you that you ot perceive in nature any thing but phenomena. cannot perceive the workman in the work;

*De Cupidine.

that is, the cause in the phenomena the fundamental cause of causes - which is beyond the power of the senses and the understanding. Speaking of the idols of the mind, he declares against the idea of the first cause being of human shape, or of human mind, and says, "For if that great workmaster had been of a human disposition," &c. In another place, he considers the idea (maintained by the author of "The Vestiges") of the formation of matter on mind, or "archetypal ideas," as one of the phantasms, or spectral illusions floating about, and playing on the surface of things. It is fine to hear the thunder of Bacon's eloquence against the arrogance and ignorance and persecuting spirit of the theologians. Only a few years before, the aged Galileo was taken before the Inquisition, and forced to "declare truth to be what the Church pleased, not what was declared in nature, but what was in 'the Holy Scriptures.' And think you those times are passed, and men are now pure and tolerant? Have we no living instances? Was not Lawrence forced to retract his opinion? And are not those noblest experiments of the age by Mr. Crosse* regarded with religious horror, and ridiculed by many? Bacon denounces all introduction of abstracted forms, fantastical essences, final causes, or first causes, to interfere with the simple laws of nature, and of matter as we find it. For when "Folly is worshipped," he says, "it is, as it were, a plague-spot upon the understanding." "Yet some

* Appendix S.