236 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



But this was not enough to satisfy the mind of Francis Bacon, 

 who now assumed the leadership of the great scientific revolu- 

 tion, begun by him, and carried on in our day by the devotees 

 of science everywhere. Entertaining profound respect and 

 admiration for the great thinkers of ancient times, to whom I 

 have alluded, and moving by his own natural forces along the 

 same high plane of thought which they occupied, he stooped 

 down and lifted into their august presence that useful and 

 manly and homely attribute known as common sense. To be 

 a philosopher meant with him to be the most useful man in the 

 world ; and so to him belongs the praise of having invented, 

 methodized, and in a considerable degree perfected the general 

 plan for the improvement of natural science by the only sure 

 method of experiment. " Instead of hypotheses he asked for 

 facts, gathered laboriously from the watch of nature's silent 

 revolutions, or extorted skilfully by instruments and trials, and 

 carried forward by careful generalizations from the world of the 

 known to the unknown." He reasoned always from causes to 

 effects ; and so impatient was his mind of mere abstractions, 

 that he never rested until he had brought his conclusions to 

 some practical benefit. " He clearly, for instance, conceived 

 of a thermometer; he instituted ingenious experiments on the 

 compressibility of bodies, and on the density and weight of air ; 

 he suggested chemical processes ; he suspected the law of univer- 

 sal attraction, afterwards demonstrated by Newton ; he foresaw 

 the true explication of the tides, and the cause of colors, which 

 he ascribes to the manner in which bodies, owing to their differ- 

 ent texture, reflect the rays of light." Ask a follower of Bacon, 

 we are told, what the new philosophy as it was called in the 

 time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and his 

 answer is ready : — "It has lengthened life; it has mitigated 

 pain ; it has extinguished diseases ; it has increased the fertility 

 of the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner; it has 

 furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers 

 and estuaries, with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; 

 it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth ; 

 it has lighted up the night with the splendor of the day ; it 

 has extended the range of human vision ; it has multiplied the 

 power of the human muscle ; it has accelerated motion ; it has 

 annihilated distance ; it has facilitated intercourse, correspond- 



