NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 21 



entific proofs, accepts the interference of the devil in physical 

 phenomena as in other directions, and applies the mediaeval theo- 

 logical method throughout his whole work.* 



Yet far more remarkable was the example, a century later, of 

 the man who more than any other led the modern world out of 

 the path opened by Aquinas, and into that which Roger Bacon 

 had sought to open and which has led modern thought to its 

 greatest conquests. Strange as it may at first seem, Francis 

 Bacon, whose keenness of sight revealed the delusions of the old 

 path and the promises of the new, and whose boldness did so 

 much to turn the world from the old path into the new, presents 

 in his own writings one of the most striking examples of the evil 

 he did so much to destroy. 



The Novum Organon, considering the time when it came from 

 his pen, is doubtless one of the greatest exhibitions of genius in 

 the history of human thought. It showed the modern world the 

 way out of the scholastic method and reverence for dogma into 

 the experimental method and reverence for fact. In it occur 

 many passages which show that the great philosopher was fully 

 alive to the danger both to religion and to science arising from 

 their mixture. He declares that the "corruption of philosophy 

 from superstition and theology introduced the greatest amount of 

 evil both into whole systems of philosophy and into their parts." 

 He denounces those who " have endeavored to found a natural 

 philosophy on the books of Genesis and Job and other sacred 

 Scriptures, so * seeking the dead among the living.' " He speaks 

 of the result as " an unwholesome mixture of things, human and 

 divine ; not merely fantastic philosophy, but heretical religion." 

 He refers to the opposition of the fathers to the doctrine of the 

 rotundity of the earth, and says that " thanks to some of them, 

 you may find the approach to any kind of philosophy, however 

 improved, entirely closed up." He charges that some of these 

 divines are "afraid lest perhaps a deeper inquiry into Nature 

 should penetrate beyond the allowed limits of sobriety"; and 

 finally speaks of theologians as sometimes craftily conjecturing 

 that if science be little understood, "each single thing can be 

 referred more easily to the hand and rod of God," and says, " 77< is 

 is nothing more nor less than wishing to please God by a lie." 



No man who has reflected much upon the annals of his race 

 can, without a feeling of awe, come into the presence of such 

 clearness of insight and boldness of utterance, and the first 

 thought of the reader is, that of all men Francis Bacon is the 



* For Melanchthon's ideas on physio, so*- his luitia Doctrine Ph\>ir;i-, Wittenberg, 1557, 

 specially pp. '243 and 274; also in vol. xiiiof BretsclineHer's edition of the collected works, 

 and especially pp. 339-343. 



