PREFACE xi 



since my end of putting 1 it into Latin was to have it 

 read everywhere, it had been an absurd contradiction 

 to free it in the language and to pen it up in the 

 matter. 



Bacon s Essays evince his pregnancy of thought 

 and power of surprise ; his Novum Organum all the 

 logical faculties of wit, memory, judgement, and 

 elocution imputed to him in his Life by his chaplain, 

 Dr. Rawley ; his Advancement and De Augmentis what 

 his biographer calls his deep and universal apprehen 

 sion. As Macaulay remarks, The knowledge in 

 which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the 

 mutual relations of all the departments of know 

 ledge. He had, in short, the very qualities required 

 for a book on all learning ; wherein, though a critic of 

 antiquity, he nevertheless appreciates the past, while 

 he expects more from the future ; wherein he finds a 

 place for the display of all man s faculties, historical, 

 poetical, and scientific ; and wherein he enlarges the 

 scope of science to the triple knowledge of God, 

 nature, and man as the three main constituents of 

 the universe ; while before all, like Aristotle, he places 

 the science of all things, and warns us that men 

 have abandoned universality, or philosophic* prima : 

 which cannot but cease and stop all progression * . 

 In dealing with God, he recognizes both natural and 

 revealed theology 2 . In dealing with Nature, he em 

 braces all kinds of causes, adds to the concrete 

 sciences of bodies the abstract sciences of their 

 attributes, such as motion, sound, heat, &c., which 

 have proved so successful since his times, and shows 

 his wide comprehension of physical science by 

 devoting it to the whole fabric of nature and to its 

 least elements, as well as to the various bodies of 

 which it is composed 3 . In dealing with Man, he at 

 once grasps human nature as a whole ; man both as 

 an individual and as a social being ; body and soul 



1 Post, pp. 37, 93 seq. a Post, -pp. 96 seq., 221 seq. 



3 Post, pp. 98 seq. 



