SCIENCE IN THE LAST HALF CENTURY. 59 



FRANCIS BACON. 



In our own country Francis Bacon had essayed to sum up the past of 

 physical science, and to indicate the path which it must follow if its 

 great destinies were to be fulfilled. And though the attempt was just 

 such a magnificent failure as might have been expected from a man of 

 great endowments, who was so singularly devoid of scientific insight 

 that he could not understand the value of the work already achieved by 

 the true instaurators of physical science, yet the majestic eloquence 

 and the fervid vaticinations of one who was conspicuous alike by the 

 greatness of his rise and the depth of his fall, drew the attention of all 

 the world to the "new birth of Time." 



liut it is not easy to discover satisfactory evidence that the ''Novum 

 Organum" had any direct beneficial influence on the advancement of 

 natural knowledge. No delusion is greater than the notion that method 

 and industry can make up for lack of mother wit, either in science or 

 in practical life, and it is strange that, with his knowledge of mankind, 

 Bacon should have dreamed that his or any other " via inveniendi sci- 

 entias" would "level men's wits" and leave little scope for that inborn 

 capacity which is called genius. As a matter of fact, Bacon's "via" 

 has prov^ed hopelessly impracticable, while the " Anticipation of Na- 

 ture," by the invention of hypotheses based on incomplete inductions, 

 which he specially condemns, has proved itself to be a most eflicient, 

 indeed an indispensable, instrument of scientific progress. Finally, 

 that transcendental alchemy, the superinducement of new forms on mat- 

 ter, which Bacon declares to be the supreme aim of science, has been 

 wholly ignored by those who have created the physical knowledge of 

 the present day. 



Even the eloquent advocacy of the chancellor brought no unmixed 

 good to physical science. It was natural enough that the man who, in 

 his better moments, took "all knowledge for his patrimony," but, in his 

 worse, sold that birthright for the mess of pottage of court favor and 

 professional success, for pomp and show, should be led to attach an 

 undue value to the practical advantages which he foresaw, as Roger 

 Bacon and, indeed, Seneca had foreseen, long before his time, must 

 follow in the train of the advancement of natural knowledge. The 

 burden of Bacon's pleadings for science is the " gathering of fruit " — the 

 importance of winning solid material advantages by the investigation 

 of nature and the desirableness of limiting the application of scientific 

 methods of inquiry to that field. 



THOMAS HOBBES. 



Bacon's younger contemporary, Hobbes, casting aside the prudent 

 reserve of his predecessor in regard to those matters about which the 

 Crown or the Church might have something to say, extended scientific 

 methods of inquiry to the phenomena of mind and the problems of 



