BLACK. 343 



that Lord Bacon, although he quite clearly perceived 

 that chemistry might one day be advanced to the rank 

 of a science (De Dig. et Aug. iii.), yet always treats the 

 chemistry of his day as merely empirical (Nov. Org. 

 s. Ixiv. Ixxiii.*). But I have preferred taking the 

 account of chemical science from the ' Encyclopedic/ 

 first, because it gives, if not the opinion or the testi- 

 mony of the learned body at large who prepared that 

 work, yet certainly an opinion and a testimony which 

 had the sanction of its more eminent members ; and, 

 secondly, because its date is at the eve of the great 

 revolution in natural science of which we are speaking. 



* " Itaque tails philosophia (in paucorum experimentorum ar- 

 gutiis et obscuritate fundata) illis qui in hujusmodi experimentis 

 quotidie versantur atque ex ipsis phantasmatis contaminarunt, pro- 

 babilis videtur, et quasi certa ; cseteris incredibilis et vana, cujus 

 exemplar notabile est in chemicis eorumque dogmatibus," 



It must be added that beside the injustice here done to Van Hel- 

 mont, he goes on to rank Gilbert in the same empirical class, as he 

 elsewhere does a most incorrect view of Gilbert's induction, the 

 most perfect by far of any before Lord Bacon's age, and, though 

 mixed with some hypothetical reasoning, hardly in strictness ex- 

 celled by any philosopher of after times. I cannot come so near 

 the remarkable sixty-fifth section of the * Novum Organum' without 

 digressing so far from my subject as to cite the prophetic warning 

 given to some zealots without knowledge of our own times against 

 the "apotheosis errorum," the " pestis intellectus, si vanis accedat 

 veneratio." " Huic autem vanitati (adds the pious and truly Chris* 

 tian sage) nonnulli ex modernis summa levitate ita indulsenmt ut in 

 primo capitulo Geneseos et in libro Job et aliis scripturae locis phi- 

 losophiam naturalem fundari conati sunt ; inter mortua quserentes 

 viva ;" a folly the more to be deprecated, he says, because " ex 

 divinarum et humanarum malesana admistione non solum educitur 

 philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio hseretica." His practical 

 conclusion, therefore, is to render unto faith the things alone which 

 are faith's : " Admodum salutare, si mente sobria, fidei tantum dentur 

 quse fidei sunt." 



