1894.] on Bacon's Key to Nature. 199 



" Be not too bold," and his audacity contrasts with the modest tem- 

 perance of more practically successful men of science, who owed 

 their triumphs in large measure to the self-restraint which led men 

 first to ascertain facts without any inquiry after their cause. Bacon's 

 Tables including those of moral as well as physical conditions, tables of 

 Anger, Hate, Love, as well as of Density, Heat, Cold, exceed the error 

 of such of his partial successors as Comte and Buckle, in ignoring the 

 peculiarly complex action, if not the absolute freedom, of the human 

 will. Knowledge of the mental powers is a sort of experience ; His- 

 tory an observation on mankind ; Education an experiment ; but the 

 uniformity of Nature does not hold good in the same degree in the 

 Moral as in the Physical world. 



Bacon overestimated the precision of his Method, in comparing it 

 to a pair of compasses, so that, once in possession of it, all intellects 

 may work alike, and consequently fell into the error of supposing 

 that it must proceed by a mechanical accumulation, ignoring the fact 

 that in Astronomy the great guesses, to be afterwards verified, saved 

 centuries of the work of ants. Macaulay's criticism is here just. No 

 method will bridge the gulf between a dnnce and a man of genius. 

 His numerous minor errors have been sufficiently indicated. They 

 are no more frequent than might have been expected from the wide 

 grasp of his mind, his antithetical temper and combative iconoclasm, 

 and from the abnormal faculty of finding analogies which led him to 

 snatch unripe apples from the tree of wisdom. No man can leap 

 beyond his own shadow ; hardly one beyond the shadow of his age. 



"When the criticism of pure logicians, who retort on Bacon's 

 attacks on the syllogism by reasserting its analytic value ; of 

 specialists — the modern Schoolmen — who resent his insufficient view of 

 their little worlds ; of mere physicists, who dislike his metaphysical 

 side and dwell, as Baron Liebig does, with acrimonious exclusiveness 

 on his defects ; of German metaphysicians who have treated him as 

 hardly in their blame as the majority of German critics have dealt 

 with Shakespeare in their praise ; when their cavils have done their 

 worst, he has received from scientific and literary men of larger 

 grasp the crown of the great anticipator of the results, the first 

 organiser of the methods of modern science, the prophet of things 

 that Newton revealed. He is commended by Descartes as the man 

 who knew best how to make experience useful ; by Gassendi as the 

 originator of the Logic from which we may expect the development of 

 a new philosophy. Leibnitz conceived his own Monad ism to be akin 

 to the doctrine of the " De Principiis," and asserted, " We do well to 

 think highly of Verulam, for his hard sayings have in them a deep mean- 

 ing." Kant alludes to Bacon's work as that of one of the greatest physi- 

 cists of modern times. Laplace refers to him as " the brightest man of 

 his bright century." Playfair says, " It is easier to find new Galileos 

 than new Bacons." Herschel compares him to " the star that an- 

 nounces the day." Mackintosh declares " his authority will have no 

 end." Mill, marking his lacunee, reveres his name. Whewell, who 



