sect, ii.] DISSERTATION SECOND. 91 



that of Bacon's ; as it impressed more movement on the 

 age in which he lived, example being always so much more 

 powerful than precept. Bacon, indeed, wrote for an £ge 

 more enlightened than his own, and it was long before the 

 full merit of his work was understood. But though Galileo 

 was a geometer, and Bacon unacquainted with the mathe- 

 maticks, — though Galileo added new proofs to the system 

 of the earth's motion, which Bacon rejected altogether, — 

 yet is it certain, I think, that the former has more fellows 

 or equals in the world of science than the latter, and that 

 his excellence, though so high, is less unrivalled. The 

 range which Bacon's speculations embraced was altogether 

 immense. He cast a penetrating eye on the whole of 

 science, from its feeblest and most infantine state, to that 

 strength and perfection from which it was then so remote, 

 and which it is perhaps destined to approach to continually, 

 but never to attain. More substitutes might be found for 

 Galileo than for Bacon. More than one could be mention- 

 ed, who, in the place of the former, would probably have 

 done what he did ; but the history of human knowledge 

 points out nobody of whom it can be said, that, placed in 

 the situation of Bacon, he would have done what Bacon 

 did ; — no man whose prophetick genius would have enabled 

 him to delineate a system of science which had not yet 

 begun to exist ! — who could have derived the knowledge of 

 what ought to be from what was not, and who could have 

 become so rich in wisdom, though he received from his 

 predecessors no inheritance but their errours. I am in- 

 clined, therefore, to agree with D'Alembert, " that when 

 one considers the sound and enlarged views of this great 

 man, the multitude of the objects to which his mind was 

 turned, and the boldness of his style, which unites the most 

 sublime images with the most rigorous precision, one i> 



