326 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



thing tangible which it can find near by." No induction, 

 and least of all, one based on precise rules, ever brought 

 him to this conclusion. No conclusion ever contained, or 

 was likely to lead to the acquirement of less of the "fruit" 

 which the inductive method aimed to secure. It is easier 

 to perceive in the assertion a rediictio ad absurdum and a 

 satire, than the inconsistency which otherwise obtrudes 

 itself. He denied Gilbert's effluvia, and pointed his denial 

 by suggesting, as a truer hypothesis, the notion of the 

 magnetic appetite, which, none better than he knew, 

 owed its existence to nothing but "the sterile exuber- 

 ance" of ancient thought. 



Macaulay likens the speculations of the old world in the 

 realm of natural philosophy to ploughing, harrowing, 

 reaping and threshing, with no better result than to fill 

 the garners with smut and stubble. Bacon is fond of the 

 parable of the farmer who directed his sons to dig in the 

 vineyard for hidden treasure the gold not being found, 

 but the cultivation vastly increasing the yield of the vines. 



His opinion of Gilbert's work accords with Macaulay 's 

 analogy, for he believed that it yielded no valuable har- 

 vest on the other hand it falls within his favorite alle- 

 gory, for Gilbert's digging the experiments on the mag- 

 net and the amber was in itself admittedly good and 

 valuable. It was to him as if Gilbert had ploughed and 

 harrowed to improve soil which had yielded, not grain, 

 but weeds not the vine loaded with bursting clusters, but 

 the malignant creeper luxuriant with poisonous foliage. 

 To Bacon the Copernican theory was a pestilent thing. 

 Gilbert's tillage of the land could make it none the less 

 noxious rather the contrary : far less could he convert it 

 into the fruitful vine. Nor, to change the figure, could 

 the stones which Gilbert quarried suffice for a monument 

 reaching to the skies. His pile ended in clouds not in 

 the heavens. 



In distinguishing between Gilbert's physical discoveries 

 and his cosmical speculations, Bacon regards the latter as 



