vorinus. 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, thrashing. But the garners contained only smut and stub ble. 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 subtlety in the solution of very obscure questions.* 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 censures 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 quæ flagitat usus Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata.” This contented despondency-this disposition to admire what has been done, and to ex 273 Christianity. The Church was now victorious and corrupt. The rites of the Pantheon had passed into her worship; the subtleties of the Academy into her creed. In an evil day, says Bacon, though with great pomp and solemnity, was the ill-starred alliance stricken between the old philosophy and the new faith.* Ques tions 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 conjurors. There can be no strenger 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. of both are unknown. Nor was this beThe authors cause men were too rude and ignorant to value intellectual superiority. The inventor of gunpowder appears to have been contemporary with Petrarch and Boccaccio. inventor of printing was 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 year's earlier. George of Trebisond and Marsillio 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. The At length the time arrived when the barren pect that nothing more will be done is strong-philosophy which had, during so many ages, y characteristic of all the schools which employed the faculties of the ablest men, was preceded the school of Fruit and Progress. It had mingled itself with many creeds. It destined to fall. It had worn many shapes. Widely as the Epicurean and the Stoic differed had survived revolutions, in which empires, on most points, they seem to have quite agreed In their contempt for pursuits so vulgar as to Driven from its ancient haunts, it had taken religions, languages, races, had perished. be useful. The philosophy of both was a gar- sanctuary in that church which it had perso rulous, declaiming, canting, wrangling philo-cuted; and had, like the daring fiends of the sophy. Century after century they continued "next the seat of God, And with its darkness dared affront his light.” o repeat their hostile war-cries-Virtue and poet, placed its seat "O tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen words, had been all the fruit of all the toil, of Words and mere words, and nothing but all the most renowned sages of sixty genera tions. But the days of this sterile exuberance were numbered. Many causes predisposed the public mund In the fifth century, Christianity had con- to a change. The study of a great variety of quered Paganism, and Paganism had infected ancient writers, though it did not give a right *Seneca, Nat. Quest, præf. Lib. 3. VOL. II.-35 Cogitata et visa. 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 any thing 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." gether 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 its 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 was 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 capit tanquam aspera et barbara." The part which Bacon played in this great change was the part, not of Robespierre, but of Bonaparte. When he came forward 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 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 great reformers treated the Peripatetic philosophy with contempt; and spoke of Aristotle as if Aristotle had been answerable for all the dog-leader capable of conducting them. mas of Thomas Aquinas. "Nulla 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 them 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, had 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, had 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. 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 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 philosophiæ ejusmodi quæ nihil inanis aut abstracti habeat, quæque vitæ hu manæ conditiones in melius provehat."† The first effect of this great revolution was, as Bacon most justly observed,† 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 works 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 alto We quote, on the authority of Bayle, from Melchior 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 conve⚫ nience 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 it above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this studynot 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 tar gible world, and to fix them on the immutable essence of things. Both these passages are in the first book of the De Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch | views underwent a change. 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 their trifles, and to employ themselves in framing convenient expressions, which may be of use in physical researches.* When, nearly 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,* he pronounced that mathematical science could claim no higher rank than that of an appendage, or an auxiliary to other sciences. Mathemauical science, he says, is the handmaid of The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study of arithmetic led him to re-natural philosophy; she ought to demean hercommend also the study of mathematics. The self as such; and he declares that he cannot vulgar crowd of geometricians, he says, will conceive by what ill chance it has happened not understand him. They have practice always that she presumes to claim precedence over in view. They do not know that the real use of her mistress. He predicts-a prediction which the science is to lead men to the knowledge would have made Plato shudder-that as more of abstract, essential, etcrnal_truth.† Indeed, and more discoveries are made in physics, if we are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this there will be more and more branches of feeling so far, that he considered geometry as mixed mathematics. Of that collateral advandegraded by being applied to any purpose of tage, the value of which, twenty years before, vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed he rated so highly, he says not one word. This machines of extraordinary power, on mathe- omission cannot have been the effect of mere matical principles. Plato remonstrated with inadvertence. His own treatise was before his friend; and declared that this was to de- him. From that treatise he deliberately exgrade a noble intellectual exercise into a low punged whatever was favourable to the study craft, fit only for carpenters and wheelwrights. of pure mathematics, and inserted several keen The office of geometry, he said, was to dis-reflections on the ardent votaries of that study. cipline 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. 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 Archimedes in a later age imitated and sur- of using any expression which might have the passed Archytas. But even Archimedes was effect of inducing any man of talents to employ not free from the prevailing notion, that geo-in speculations, useful only to the mind of the metry was degraded by being employed to produce any thing useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced to stocp 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 he 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 • De Augmentis, Lib. 3, Cap. 6. Plato's Republic, Book 7. Plutarch, Sympos. viii., and Life of Marcellus. The machines of Archytas are also mentioned by Aulus Gellius and Diogenes Laertius. speculator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the empire of man over matter. 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. Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences which Plato exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons far removed from common habits of thinking. "Shall we set down astronomy," says Socrates, "among the subjects of study ?" "I think so," answers his young friend Glauco: "to know something about the seasons, about the months and the years, is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and navigation." "It amuses me," says Socrates," to see how afraid you are lest the common herd of people should accuse you of recommending useless studies." He then proceeds in that pure and magnificent diction, which, as Cicero said, Ju piter would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to ex plain, that the use of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life, but to assist in raising the mind to the contemplation of things which are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The knowledge of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies he considers as of little value. The appearances which make the sky beautiful at night are, he tells us, like the figures which a geometrician draws on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to feeble minds. We must get beyond them; we must neglect them; we must attain to an astronomy which is as independent of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very nearly, if not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon compared to the ox of Prometheus-a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He complained that astronomy had, to its great injury, been separated from natural philosophy, of which it was one of the noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain of mathematics. The world stood in need, he said, of a very different astronomy-of a living astronomy,† of an astronomy which should set+ forth the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly bodies, as they really are. On the greatest and most useful of all inventions, the invention of alphabetical writing, Plato did not look with much complacency. He seems to have thought that the use of letters had operated on the human mind as the use of the go-cart in learning to walk, or of corks in learning to swim, is said to operate on the human body. It was a support which soon became indispensable to those who used it, which made vigorous exertion first unnecessary, and then impossible. The powers of the intellect would, he conceived, have been more fully developed without this delusive aid. Men would have been compelled to exercise the understanding and the memory; and, by deep and assiduous meditation, to make truth thoroughly their own. Now, on the contrary, much knowledge is traced on paper, but little is engraved on the soul. A man is certain that he can find information at a moment's notice when he wants it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his mind. Such a man caunot in strictness be said to know any thing. He has the show without the reality of wisdom. These opinions Plato has put into the mouth of an ancient king of Egypt. But it is evident from the context that they were his own; and so they were understood to be by Quintilian.[ Indeed, they are in perfect accordance with the whole Platonic system. Bacon's views, as may easily be supposed, were widely different.1 The powers of the memory, he observes, without the help of writing, can do little towards the advancement of any useful science. He acknowledges that the memory may be disciplined to such a point as to be able to perform very extraordinary feats. But on such feats he sets little value. The habits of his mind, he tells us, are such that he is not disposed to rate highly any accomplishment, however rare, which is of no practical use to mankind. As to these prodigious achievements of the memory, he ranks them with the exhibitions of rope-dancers and tumblers. "The two performances," he says, "are of much the same sort. The one is an abuse of the powers of the body; the other is an abuse of the powers of the mind. Both may perhaps excite our wonder; but neither is en titled to our respect." To Plato, the science of medicine appeared one of very disputable advantage. He did not indeed object to quick cures for acute disorders, or for injuries produced by accidents. But the art which resists the slow sap of a chronic disease, which repairs frames ener vated by lust, swollen by gluttony, or inflamed by wine, which encourages sensuality, by mitigating the natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs existence when the intellect has ceased to retain its entire energy, had no share of his esteem. A life protracted by medical skill he pronounced to be a long death. The exercise of the art of medicine ought, he said, to be tolerated so far as that art may serve to cure the occasional distempers of men whose constitutions are good. As to those who have bad constitutions, let them die; and the sooner the better. Such men are unfit for war, for magistracy, for the management of their domestic affairs. That, however, is comparatively of little consequence. But they are incapable of study and speculation. If they engage in any severe mental exercise, they are troubled with giddiness and fulness of the head; all which they lay to the account of philosophy. The best thing that can happen to such wretches is to have done with life at once. He quotes mythical authority in support of this doctrine; and reminds his disciples that the practice of the sons of Esculapius, as described by Homer, extended only to the cure of external injuries. Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the sciences, that which he seems to have regarded with the greatest interest was the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well-regulated community. To make men perfect was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make imperfect men comfortable. The beneficence of his philosophy resembled the beneficence of the common Father, whose sun rises on the evil and the good, whose rain descends for the just and the unjust. In Plato's opinion man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion philosophy was made for man; it was a means to an end; and that end was to increase the pleasures, and to mitigate the pains of millions who are not and cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Na * Plato's Republic, Book 3. 277 varre's tales, should be treated as caput lupinum convinced the reason nor touched the heart, because he could not read the Timæus without must be a most imperfect law. He was not a headache, was a notion which the humane content with deterring from theft a man who spirit of the English school of wisdom alto- still continued to be a thief at heart, with regether rejected. Bacon would not have straining a son who hated his mother from thought it beneath the dignity of a philosopher beating his mother. The only obedience on to contrive an improved garden-chair for such which he set much value, was the obedience a valetudinarian; to devise some way of ren- which an enlightened understanding yields to dering his medicines more palatable; to in- reason, and which a virtuous disposition yields vent repasts which he might enjoy, and pillows to precepts of virtue. He really seems to have on which he might sleep soundly; and this, believed that, by prefixing to every law aa elothough there might not be the smallest hope quent and pathetic exhortation, he should, to a that the mind of the poor invalid would ever great extent, render penal enactments superrise to the contemplation of the ideal beautiful fluous. Bacon entertained no such romantic and the ideal good. As Plato had cited the re- hopes; and he well knew the practical inconligious legends of Greece to justify his con- veniences of the course which Plato recomtempt for the more recondite parts of the art mended. "Neque nobis," says he, "prologi of healing, Bacon vindicated the dignity of that legum qui inepti olim habiti sant et leges introart by appealing to the example of Christ; and ducunt disputantes non jubentes utique placereminded his readers that the great Physician rent si priscos mores ferre possemus.. of the soul did not disdain to be also the phy- Quantum fieri potest prologi evitentur et lex sician of the body. incipiat a jussione."* the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt To sum up the whole: we should say that man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. When we pass from the science of medicine to that of legislation, we find the same differ- comparison between that noble fiction and the Had Plato lived to finish the "Critias," a ence between the systems of these two great" New Atlantis" would probably have furnishmen. Plato, at the commencement of the fine ed us with still more striking instances. It is Dialogue on Laws, lays it down as a funda- amusing to think with what horror he would mental principle, that the end of legislation is have seen such an institution as "Solomon's to make men virtuous. It is unnecessary to House" rising in his republic; with what vepoint out the extravagant conclusions to which hemence he would have ordered the brewsuch a proposition leads. Bacon well knew to houses, the perfume-houses, and the dispensahow great an extent the happiness of every tories to be pulled down; and with what inexsociety must depend on the virtue of its memorable rigour he would have driven beyond the bers; and he also knew what legislators can. frontier all the Fellows of the College, Merand what they cannot do for the purpose of chants of light and Depredators, Lamps and promoting virtue. The view which he has Pioneers. given of the end of legislation, and of the principal means for the attainment of that end, has always seemed to us eminently happy; even among the many happy passages of the same kind with which his works abound. "Finis et scopus quem leges intueri atque ad quem jussiones et sanctiones suas dirigere debent, non alius est quam ut cives feliciter degant. Id fiet si pietate et religione recte instituti, moribus honesti, armis adversus hostes externos tuti, legum auxilio adversus seditiones et privatas injurias muniti, imperio et magistratibus obsequentes, copiis et opibus locupletes et florentes fuerint." The end is the well-being of the people. The means are the imparting of moral and religious education; the providing of every thing necessary for defence against foreign enemies; the maintaining of internal order; the establishing of a judicial, finan-Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was cial, and commercial system, under which placed on the earth and within bow-shot, and wealth may be rapidly accumulated and se- hit it in the white. The philosophy of Plato curely enjoyed. Even with respect to the form in which laws words indeed-words such as were to be exbegan in words and ended in words-noble ought to be drawn, there is a remarkable differ- pected from the finest of human intellects exence of opinion between the Greek and the Eng-ercising boundless dominion over the finest of lishman. Plato thought a preamble essential; human languages. The philosophy of Bacon Bacon thought it mischievous. Each was con- began in observations and ended in arts. sistent with himself. Plato, considering the moral improvement of the people as the end of legislation, justly inferred that a law which commanded and threatened, but which neither De Augmentis, Lib. 4, Cap. 2. latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow; The former aim was noble; but the but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the stars; and therefore, though there was no want of strength or skill, the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed followed by a track of dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing. a "Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo that their doctrine formed the minds of men to The boast of the ancient philosophers was, high degree of wisdom and virtue. This was indeed the only practical good which the most celebrated of those teachers even pretended to * De Augmentis, Tib. 8, Cap. 3, Aph. 69. |