FRANCIS BACON (1560-1910) 499 



former was that of national or racial aggrandizement, the conquest of 

 territory and political control. The latter, contributed by the genius 

 of Greece, was the humanistic idea of the intensive cultivation and 

 refinement of human nature. These ancient ideas were superseded 

 by Christian supernaturalism, which referred man's hope of salvation 

 to another world which might be won by the repudiation of this. As 

 christian Europe became secularized there developed the theocratic 

 idea of a fixed system in which all human activities should be limited 

 and controlled by religious authority. Finally, as a reaction against 

 the established order, there appeared the idea of the Renaissance, 

 an enthusiasm for antiquity, and desire to reverse the course of 

 history. The modern idea, though it borrows something from all 

 of these ideas, is fundamentally different. It bespeaks a solidarity 

 of mankind in the enterprise of life, and in this manifests its 

 Christianity; and it derives from paganism a respect for human 

 capacities, and a confidence in man's power to win the good for 

 himself. But these motives are so united in the modern spirit as to 

 produce something genuinely new. The good is to be won by the race 

 and for the race; it lies in the future, and can result only from pro- 

 longed and collective endeavor; and the power to achieve it lies in the 

 progressive knowledge and control of nature. This is the Baconian 

 idea. The incentive to knowledge lies in its application to life. " For 

 fruits and inventions are, as it were, sponsors and sureties for the 

 truth of philosophies." Therefore, Bacon would have men of learning 

 begin and end their study with the facts of their present environment. 

 " For our road does not lie on a level, but ascends and descends, 

 first ascending to axioms, then descending to works." In the last part 

 of the New Atlantis there is a remarkable description of the riches of 

 Solomon's House, the great museum and laboratory, the treasure house 

 and workshop, which was " the lantern of this kingdom." The words 

 with which the father of Solomon's House receives his visitors are a 

 terse and eloquent summary of that which Francis Bacon prophesied, 

 and which posterity has steadily achieved. " The end of our founda- 

 tion is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things ; and the 

 enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things 

 possible." 



