relic of man's ancient purity." But what makes it right is the good of others, especially of the State-i.e., the greater whole, of which the individual is a part. After a "Treatise Touching the Extension of Empire," nearly identical with the Essay on "The True Greatness of Kingdoms," the Eighth Book of the 'De Augmentis' ends with a series of admirable and authoritative suggestions, in aphoristic form, on the theory of the administration and codification of Laws. At starting, he remarks that there are “three fountains of injusticenamely, mere force, a malicious ensnarement under colour of law, and harshness of the law itself." These, and other evils, he proposes to remedy by a revisal of the whole Corpus Juris, not patching, as from this ensues a torment like that of Mezentius, whereby the living laws are stifled in the embraces of the dead;" and lays it down that the end and scope of all laws is " no other than the happiness of the citizens."

We have seen what Bacon's practical POLITICS really were—i.e., a perpetual application of the fifth precept of his Architect of Fortune.' "Imitate nature, which does nothing in vain. . . . In every action a man should have one intention so underlying another that, if he cannot obtain his wishes in the best degeee, he may yet be satisfied if he succeed in a second, or even a third; . . for nothing is more impolitic than to be entirely bent on one action." Consistently with this attitude, he always writes as an English statesman, having in his mind the golden mean, "mediocria firma "; never as an idealist. But there had come to him, through the Renaissance, almost the exact idea of an Aristotelian state, modified by the Roman examples of Plutarch and Livy, the study

of Cicero's Letters,' and the experiences of the struggle between Italian tyrannies and republics, presented by Machiavelli and Guicciardini. His conception of the more or less hostile relation of one State to another was almost wholly Greek, especially in his views (to which we have before referred) on Commerce, as regulated by a sliding-scale of retaliatory restrictions-a view wholly antagonistic to Cosmopolitanism.

Comparing the "Essay on Kingdoms " with passages in the 'De Augmentis,' and the interpretation of the myth of Perseus, we find his attitude as regards War to vary only in degree: his belief being that it is a necessary evil, but not one of the greatest, and with many compensations; that the Spartans only went to slight excess in making the military strength of their citizens the aim of their training. Bacon's advice to England is always the same (De Augmentis,' Book VIII.): "Security" (i.e., in Shakespeare's sense) "is an ill guard for a kingdom. The seas are our walls, and the ships our bulwarks. I, in my disposition and profession, am wholly for peace; justice is the best protector of it at home, and provision for war is the best prevention of it from abroad." He follows the ancients in his idea of the relation of the various classes of the community within the State itself, in his disparagement of the tradesmen as ẞávavool, his reliance on the nobility and yeomanry, belief in agriculture as the best of peaceful avocations the mainstay of a nation; in his regret that indoor crafts cannot now be relegated to slaves; in his holding the mercantile theory of money as the standard of value. He is Platonic in assigning to the State the entire control of the Education, physical and

mental, of its citizens; the endowment and cultivation of the Arts; the limits to Religious nonconformity; the divisions of freehold Land; in his notion of an ideal Constitution, relying on the paternal government of a philosophic King. He is Aristotelian in his assertion that " envy in commonwealths is a wholesome kind of ostracism," and, above all, in his well-established principle, that different Constitutions are adapted to various conditions of life and stages of civilisation. Bacon's advocacy of colonisation belongs to an age of growing empire, and he urges the example of Rome in her readiness to widen the range of her citizenship. His strong assertion of authority-" a king must be both loved and feared, else he is lost "—in Politics, contrasts with his renunciation of it in Science. He is least modern in the dictum, that "the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people."

150

CHAPTER III.

THE NOVUM ORGANUM.'

TOWARDS the close of the 'De Augmentis' we are told that, in coasting the old sciences, the writer has only been tuning the harp of the Muses. The Novum Organum' itself, which, with its prayers, prefaces, plans, and dedications, was, on its publication, inaugurated with all the pomp of the author's Chancellorship, is the melody. Though containing little not to be found in germ at least, in Bacon's earlier treatises, it is the form in which, after twelve revisions, corresponding probably to the years of its composition (1608-1620), he was satisfied to convey the central ideas of his philosophy. That the work is best analysed not always in the actual but in the logical order of its parts, results from the often unmethodical arrangement of its constantly overlapping aphorisms. The First strikes the key-note of the whole, and its full import can only be realised when we have grasped the system which it introduces. Man, naturæ minister et interpres, can do and understand only as he has observed the course of nature," means that we can accomplish nothing but by discovering her uniform laws, and adjusting cir

Man "Interpres et Minister."

cumstances so as to make their action free.

151

"Natura

non nisi parendo vincitur," implies that no effect can be produced without a knowledge of the cause: all we can do is to combine or sunder, the rest is an inner craft. "That art which you say passes nature is an art which nature makes." Man is Nature's interpreter when, through phenomena, he detects her "forms," the unseen mechanism behind the visible sign, the underlying fact that remains while its manifestations change and pass. Man is her minister, as he is her copyist in arranging things in her order. To attain the cause, we have to rise to axioms, the odós avw; to produce the effect, we must descend-the ôdós káтw-to works, recognising that a cause in speculation, in practice becomes a rule. But to reach this result, to adjust anew the balance of mind and things, "mentis et rerum commercium restituere in integrum," and so to make philosophy restore the golden age, there is need of a new "ratio inveniendi" which, steering clear of the mere observation on the one hand, on the other of isolated facts, and the determination to make them agree with preconceived theories, shall find the laws or reasons of things hidden from the old Dialectic.

Bacon's remarks on the existing Sciences and the Logic of the schools (Aphorisms, 5-37) repeat in other words the censures we have before endeavoured to condense. The former are sterile, for they have but decked out chance discoveries by compilations and glosses; the latter, useless for works, has only set its seal on error, giving no account of first principles, which are to it ἀμέσοι προτάσεις : it can only reason down from notions harshly assumed; in which. when we attempt