LIFE OF BACON. IX 



of their gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man : as 

 if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to 

 rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a 

 wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a 

 fair prospect ; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise 

 itself upon ; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and 

 contention ; or a shop for profit and sale ; and not a rich 

 store-house for the glory of the Creator and the relief of 

 man s estate.&quot; 



It was not likely that, with such sentiments he would 

 meet with much sympathy in the university. It was still 

 less probable that the antipathy by which he was opposed 

 would check the ardour of his powerful mind. He went 

 right onward in his course, unmoved by the disapprobation 

 of men who turned from enquiries which they neither en 

 couraged nor understood : and, seeing through the mists, 

 by a light refracted from below the horizon, that knowledge 

 must be raised on other foundations, and built with other 

 materials than had been used through a long tract of many 

 centuries, he continued his enquiries into the laws of 

 nature, (a) and planned his immortal work upon which he 

 laboured during the greater part of his life, (b) and ulti 

 mately published when he was Chancellor, saying, &quot; I have 

 held up a light in the obscurity of Philosophy; which will 

 be seen centuries after I am dead,&quot;(c) 



(a) I remember in Trinity College in Cambridge, there was an upper 

 chamber, which being thought weak in the roof of it, was supported by a 

 pillar of iron of the bigness of one s arm in the midst of the chamber; which 

 if you had struck, it would make a little fiat noise in the room where it was 

 struck, but it would make a great bomb in the chamber beneath. Sylva. 



(ft) See note I at end. 



(c) See the dedication of the Novum Organum to the king. &quot; Mortuus 

 fortasse id effecero, ut ilia posteritati, nova hac accensa face in philosophise 

 tenebris, perlucere 



