294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



evil both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." 

 He denounces those who "have endeavored to found a natural 

 philosophy on the books of Genesis and Job and other sacred 

 Scriptures, so ' seeking the dead among the living.' " He speaks 

 of the result as " an unwholesome mixture of things, human and 

 divine; not merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion." 

 He refers to the opposition of the fathers to the doctrine of the 

 rotundity of the earth, and says that " thanks to some of them, 

 you may find the approach to any kind of philosophy, however 

 improved, entirely closed up." He charges that some of these 

 divines are "afraid lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into Nature 

 should penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety " ; and 

 finally speaks of theologians as sometimes craftily conjecturing 

 that if science be little understood, "each single thing can be 

 referred more easily to the hand and rod of God," and says, " This 

 is nothing more nor less than wishing to please God by a lie." 



No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race 

 can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such 

 clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first 

 thought of the reader is, that of all men Francis Bacon is the 

 most free from the unfortuDate bias he condemns; that he, cer- 

 tainly, can not be deluded into the old path. But as we go on 

 through his main work we are surprised to find that the strong 

 arm of Aquinas has been stretched over the intervening ages, and 

 has laid hold upon this master-thinker of the seventeenth cent- 

 ury. For only a few chapters beyond those containing the cita- 

 tions already made we find Bacon alluding to the recent voyage 

 of Columbus, and speaking of the prophecy of Daniel regarding 

 the latter days, that " many shall run to and fro and knowledge 

 be increased," as clearly signifying " that . . . the circumnaviga- 

 tion of the world and the increase of science should happen in the 

 same age." * 



In his great work on the Advancement of Learning the firm 

 grasp which the methods he condemned held upon him is shown 

 yet more clearly. In the first book of it he asserts " that excel- 

 lent book of Job, if it be revolved with diligence, will be found 

 pregnant and swelling with natural philosophy," and he endeav- 

 ors to show that in it the " roundness of the earth," the " fixing of 

 the stars, ever standing at equal distances," the " depression of the 

 southern pole," the " matter of generation," and " matter of min- 

 erals " are " with great elegancy noted." But, curiously enough, 

 he uses to support some of these truths the very texts which the 

 fathers of the Church used to destroy them, and those for which 



* See the Novum Organon, translated by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, Oxford, 1855, chaps. 

 Ixv and lxxxix. 



