FRANCIS BACON AND THE UNIVERSITY 321 



to history, modern languages, civil policy and general literature; . . ." 

 With this compare President Eliot's ' What is a Liberal Education,' 

 written in 1884; President Eliot names as subjects entitled to full 

 admission into higher culture these five: English literature, French 

 and German, history, political economy and natural science. The 

 first four are practically identical with Bacon's list; and the last, 

 natural science, is abundantly championed by Bacon in discussing what 

 he names as the third and sixth defects of the existing system. What 

 Bacon, as intellectual seer, prescribed, Eliot, as foremost actor in uni- 

 versity reform in America at least, confirms and urges. Moreover, the 

 fulfilment of Bacon's word is the more wonderful in that for two 

 centuries after he wrote, almost no movement occurred in the dry 

 bones of the traditional system, and that within the limits the third 

 hundred years the five subjects in question have conquered their right- 

 ful place in higher education. 



The second defect which Bacon saw in the institutions of his own 

 day is one which will appeal at once to those who even in this better 

 age earn their bread by service in the armies of science and learning — 

 ' the mean salaries apportioned to public lectureships, whether in the 

 sciences or the arts.' Even in this matter all must admit that progress 

 has been made since Bacon's time; and all will agree that Bacon was 

 right in pointing to higher compensation of the scientific laborer as one 

 of the indispensable conditions of large and general progress in the 

 work. It is safe to say that the economic condition of the individual 

 worker in these fields is far better to-day than it was in the sixteenth 

 century; and the total sum applied to the advancement of learning, 

 and especially to those very branches that Bacon so much advocated, 

 is immeasurably vaster than ever before in the history of the world, 

 and yearly increasing. 



" The next deficiency we shall notice," says Bacon, " is the want 

 of philosophical instruments. ... To study natural philosophy, 

 physic and many other sciences to advantage, books are not the only 

 essentials — other instruments are required." Bacon goes on to men- 

 tion what has already been done in this direction — the use of spheres, 

 globes, astrolabes, maps ; and the provision of ' gardens for the growth 

 of simples ' and dead bodies for dissection, for schools of medicine. 

 But what has been done is entirely inadequate ; ' there will be no inroad 

 made into the secrets of nature unless experiments, be they of Vulcan 

 or Daedalus (air ships?), furnace, engine or any other kind, are 

 allowed for; . . . you must allow the spies and intelligencers of 

 nature to bring in their bills, or else you will be ignorant of many 

 things worthy to be known.' With what joy would the writer of this 

 have beheld the laboratories of a modern university; how he would 



VOL. LXIX. — 21. 



