FRANCIS BACON. O 



the face of Xaturc that cveu Galileo maintained, as the basis of an 

 argument he had with Bacon, that there was high tide only once 

 in about twenty -four hours, instead of twice. 



"Witchcraft was a capital offence, and astrology was generally 

 believed in. Camden, in his ' Britannia,' which he completed in 

 1607, discussed "under the influence of what sign and planet this 

 Britannia of ours lies," though he evidently did not place much 

 faith in the divinations of astrologers. 



The Aristotelian philosophy -nas still all-powerful. Authority 

 was as it were on an unassailable pedestal, from which Bacon was, 

 destined to dethi-one it. In some countries it was dangerous to 

 controvert the generally-received opinions as to the construction 

 of the universe. Galileo was persecuted by the Inquisition for 

 teaching the true system of astronomy. But so it ever was and still 

 is to some extent : every great thinker who ventures to enunciate 

 views which appear to be opposed to the dogma current at the 

 time is virtually excommunicated, and so the progress of our 

 knowledge of the mysteries of ]S"ature is retarded, and some of our 

 most earnest seekers after truth are unjustly censured. " In 

 theology we balance authorities," said Kepler in 1609 ; " in science 

 we weigh reasons. A holy man was Lactantius, who denied that 

 the earth could be round. A holy man was Augustine, who, 

 granting the earth's rotundity, denied the antipodes. A holy 

 thing to me is the Inquisition, which, allowing the smallness of 

 the earth, denies its motion. But more holy to me is Truth ; and 

 hence I prove, by science, that the earth is round, is inhabited on 

 every side, is of small size, and in motion among the stars." These 

 conclusions startled the learned world, and well they might, for 

 they were founded on observation, not on authority. Here is a 

 specimen of the kind of reasoning to which men were then more 

 accustomed : — " The philosophers define tyme to be mensura moUU. 

 Before the heavens weare created there was no naturall motion, and, 

 by that reason, there wold be no mensura motus. That estate of 

 beinge which was before the creacion of the woorld was called 

 therefore eternitie." 



The hollowness of such trains of thought as this was destined 

 soon to be shown by Descartes, by his discovery of the laws of 

 inertia and of the persistence of force, now called the conservation 

 of energy ; and by Bacon, who taught, with the authority of a 

 Lord Chancellor of England, that the way to find out the secrets 

 of [N^ature is to question her by experiments and to observe her 

 ways, it being futile to rely upon the efforts of our own imagination 

 or to place implicit credence on the sayings or writings of others. 



