678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"To make themselves a corporation, 

 And know all things by demonstration." * 



Their offices, it is true, were not so sharply defined, nor the division of 

 labor so strictly enforced, as in the ideal " College of the Six Days' 

 Works"; but the actual never fails to blur the dividing lines of the 

 imaginary. What it is important to observe is that Bacon's " pro- 

 phetic scheme " did in truth kindle the fancy of the generation which 

 succeeded him, and that his maxims swayed their purposes. What it 

 is equally important to observe is that, in so far as they followed his 

 method in its larger bearings, they were on the track of discovery, and 

 already began to pick up stragglers from the great army of discover- 

 able truths ; but the moment they descended to particulars, and took 

 him, as it were, at his word, they found themselves in a cul-de-sac. It 

 was as if an astronomer, not content with imparting a means of taking 

 the longitude, should attempt to prescribe rules for managing the ship, 

 and the sailors, finding that flapping sails and fouled rigging invariably 

 followed upon a literal compliance, should finally come to the conclu- 

 sion to steer their course on scientific principles, but handle the ropes 

 as nautical experience might suggest. 



What, then, is the truth as regards the vexed question of Bacon's 

 influence on the progress of science ? We take it to be this : His ca- 

 pacious imagination enabled him to grasp, and his vast powers enabled 

 him to guide, a movement which he had not originated. He caught 

 up the floating ideas of his time, spread them abroad by his eloquence, 

 sank them deep by his enthusiasm, gave them universality and consist- 

 ence by his sagacity, and thus not unworthily earned the title of the 

 " Father of the Inductive Philosophy." It must be confessed, indeed, 

 that the great "Secretary of Nature" was entirely deficient in what we 

 may call official training. His lucid thoughts and splendid diction 

 were not coupled with exact knowledge or scientific experience. He 

 was innocent of mathematics. He was grossly ignorant of astronomy. 

 He knew nothing of Kepler. He despised Galileo. He passed over 

 in silence the most fruitful discovery in physiological, and the most 

 striking invention in numerical, science that had been made since the 

 world began, although both were made in his own time. He ranked 

 among the "idols" besetting the human mind that orderly instinct 

 which recommends, prima facie, the harmonious simplicity of the Co- 

 pernican hypothesis in preference to the outrageous complexity of the 

 Ptolemaic system. He cumbered his phraseology and confused his 

 argument by the adoption into physical reasoning of the metaphysical 

 abstractions of the schools, and weakened his philosophy by the rejec- 

 tion of their deepest wisdom. 



Bacon was in truth the English representative of that abortive but 



* MS. verses signed " W. G.," quoted by Weld, " History of the Royal Society," vol. 

 i., p. 79. 



