194 Professor Nichol [Feb. 16, 



far towards Unity in his simplification of apparently complex 

 natures. 



Nature with him is a mighty conjuress, who plays a myriad tricks 

 with a few cards ; man as " interpres " has to detect, and, as " minister " 

 to replay those tricks, and so by mocking to become her master. 

 Think how many colours may be made out of various combinations 

 of the three called primary. May it not be possible to resolve even 

 these last by processes analogous to those which analyse the secondary ? 

 Look at the combinations in a laboratory — the manufacture of an 

 apparent diamond out of a block of coal. How many shapes may 

 result from the arrangement of, say, six solid factors ! How many 

 more if these factors are fluid ? Is there anything strange in the 

 belief that everything that strikes any of our senses may be resolved 

 into the action and reaction of a limited number of " simple " irre- 

 solvable " natures " ? To discover these is Bacon's prime quest : for 

 as informal reasoning the conclusion follows from the premisses, so if 

 we have once caught hold of the " motifs " or apx at of Nature we 

 shall be able to reproduce her results. The " unseen universe " by 

 which we are surrounded, is thus at once the " garment of God " and 

 the heritage of man. Man is, with Bacon, " the roof and crown of 

 things," and his view of the relation of the chief of creatures to the 

 rest of creation is expressed in the verse of his friend and coadjutor 

 in translation, George Herbert, — 



<c For us the winds do blow, 

 The earth doth rest, heaven move and fountains flow. 



Man is one world and hath 

 Another to attend him." 



In the same spirit Bacon protests against the old preference of 

 Passive to Active Life, of the /3io? Oewp^Ti/cos to the (3tos 7rpaKTiKo?, as 

 in the famous passage about Pompey saying, " It is necessary for me 

 to serve the State while I live, not for me to live longer," and the 

 speech of Pythagoras to Hiero, " At the Olympian games there are 

 mere spectators, but in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only 

 for God and Angels to be lookers on." This is Bacon's Philan- 

 thropia : like Socrates he thought it his prime duty to inquire into 

 the agencies which most affect human life and happiness ; but he 

 wished to find general and not special agencies. Against nothing 

 does Bacon record more frequent and strenuous protests than the 

 mere Empirical Utilitarianism with which he has been calumniously 

 credited. " It is a corrupt judgment," he exclaims, " to think that 

 there are no true differences of things, but according to utility." 

 He perpetually set his " Experimenta Lucifera " above the Experi- 

 menta Fructifera. He conjured down Philosophy from Heaven to 

 Earth, but with her aureole on* 



The first book of the ' Advancement of Learning ' is, next to the 

 Essays, the most familiar of the author's works. There could be no 



