LIFE OF BACON. 



in music the same with the playing of light upon the 

 water, 



Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus/ &quot; (rf) 



Such are his beautiful and playful modes of familiarizing 

 abstruse subjects: but to such instances he did not con 

 fine himself. He was too well acquainted with our nature, 

 merely to explain truth without occasionally raising the 

 mind by noble and lofty images to love it. 



It must not be supposed that, because he illustrated 

 his thoughts, he was misled by imagination, which never 

 had precedence, but always followed in the train of his 

 reason : (a) or, because he had recourse to arrangement, 

 that he was enslaved by method, which he always disliked, 

 as impeding the progress of knowledge. () It is, therefore, 

 his constant admonition, that a plain, unadorned style, in 

 aphorisms, is the proper style for philosophy ; and in apho 

 risms the Novum Organum and his tract on Universal 

 Justice are composed. But, although this was his general 

 opinion ; although he was too well acquainted with what 

 he terms the idols of the mind, to be diverted from truth 

 by the love of order; yet, knowing the charms of theory 

 and system, and the necessity of adopting them to insure 

 a favourable reception for abstruse works, he did not 

 reject these garlands, at once the ornament and fetters of 

 science. They may now, perhaps, be laid aside, and the 

 noble temple which he raised may be destroyed; but its 

 gorgeous magnificence will never be forgotten, and amidst 

 the ruins a noble statue will be seen by every true wor 

 shipper of beauty and of knowledge. 



To form a correct judgment of the merits of this treatise 



(d) De Aug. lib. iii. c. i. v. 8. p. 155. 

 (a) See note 11 RR at the end. 



