SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 556. 



Let me select a few specimens of his 

 .judgments, chosen solely in relation to our 

 own subjects. When he says 



All true and fruitful natural philosophy hath 

 a double scale or ladder, ascendent and descendent, 

 ascending from experiments to the invention of 

 causes, and descending from causes to the inven- 

 tion of new experiments; therefore I judge it 

 most requisite that these two parts be severally 

 ■considered and handled — 



he is merely expounding, in what now is 

 rather archaic phrase, the principles of the 

 most ambitious investigations in the natural 

 philosophy of subsequent centuries. When 

 he speaks of 



the operation of the relative and adventive char- 

 acters of essences, as quantity, similitude, diver- 

 sity, possibility and the rest; with this distinction 

 and provision, that they be handled as they have 

 efficacy in nature, and not logically — 



I seem to hear the voice of the applied 

 mathematician warning the pure mathe- 

 matician off the field. When, after having 

 divided natural philosophy into physic and 

 metaphysic (using these words in particular 

 meanings, and including mathematics in 

 the second of the divisions), he declares 



physics should contemplate that which is inherent 

 in matter, and therefore transitory, and meta- 

 physics that which is abstracted and fixed; * * * 

 physic describeth the causes of things, but the 

 variable or respective causes; and metaphysic the 

 fixed and constant causes — 



there comes before my mind the army of 

 physicists of the present day, who devote 

 themselves unwearyingly to the properties 

 of matter and willingly cast aside elaborate 

 arguments and calculations. When he 

 argues that 



many parts of nature can neither be invented with 

 sufficient subtilty, nor demonstrated with suffi- 

 cient perspicuity, nor accommodated imto use with 

 sufficient dexterity, without the aid and inter- 

 vening of the mathematics — 



he might be describing the activity of sub- 

 sequent generations of philosophers, as- 

 tronomers and engineers. And in the last 



place (for my extracts must have some 

 end), when he expresses the opinion 



that men do not sufficiently understand the ex- 

 cellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they 

 do remedy and cure manj' defects in the wit and 

 facilities intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, 

 they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if 

 too inherent in the sense, they abstract it; * * * 

 in the mathematics, that which is collateral and 

 intervenient is no less worthy than that which 

 is principal and intended — 



I seem to hear an advocate for the inclusion 

 of elementary mathematics in any scheme 

 of general education. At the same time, I 

 wonder what Bacon, who held such a^ ex- 

 alted estimate of pure mathematics in its 

 gray dawn, would have said by way of 

 ampler praise of the subject in its fuller 

 day. 



It was a splendid vision of inductive 

 science as of other parts of learning: it 

 contained a revelation of the course of prog- 

 ress through the centuries to come. Yet 

 the facts of to-day are vaster than the vision 

 of that long-ago yesterday, and human ac- 

 tivity has far outstripped the dreams of 

 Bacon's opulent imagination. He was the 

 harbinger (premature in many respects it 

 must be confessed, but still the harbinger) 

 of a new era. At a time when we are 

 making a new departure in the fulfilment 

 of the purpose of our charter, which re- 

 quires us ' to promote the intercourse of 

 those who cultivate science in different 

 parts of the British Empire, our Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science may 

 pause for a moment to gaze upon the vision 

 revealed three centuries ago in the 'Ad- 

 vancement of Learning' by a philosopher 

 whose infiuence upon the thought of the 

 world is one of the glories of our nation. 



I have implied that Bacon's discourse 

 was in advance of its age, so far as England 

 was concerned. Individuals could make 

 their mark in isolated fashion. Thus Har- 

 vey, in his hospital work in London, dis- 

 covered the circulation of the blood; Na- 



