408 ON THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OP THE 



With such views of the new philosophy, this infatuated Ari- 

 stotelian could not but wish to decry the authority of any one 

 who was more particularly considered as its author. That he 

 himself looked upon the experimentalists of that day as the 

 disciples of Bacon, is sufficiently evident from this, that his 

 common mode of designating them, is to call them in derision 

 " a Bacon-faced generation* ." To abuse Lord Bacon, and to de- 

 preciate his philosophical character, are accordingly his favourite 

 topics. Nor does he leave us in any doubt as to the cause of 

 his enmity. It was, as he expressly tells us, " because the repute 

 " of Lord Bacon was great in that age f ;" and because " the 

 " Royal Society pretended to tread in his footsteps J." He al- 

 lows that Bacon was a wise and eloquent man -, but with re- 

 spect to his censures of the philosophy and methods of the an- 

 cients, there, says he, he was insufferably in error. " Who 

 " knows not," he asks, " how Herbary had been improved by 

 " Theophrastus, Dioscorides, the Arabians, and other Peri- 

 " patetics ? who can deny that Physic, in every part of it was 

 " improved, by Galen and others, before the Lord Bacon 

 " ever sucked ? and what accessionals had not Chemistry recei- 

 " ved by the cultivation of the Aristotelians, before his House 

 " of Solomon was dreamed of? Let us, therefore, not be con- 

 " eluded by the aphorisms of this Lord. Let his insulse ad- 

 " herents buy some salt, and make use of more than one grain 

 * l when they read him ; and let us believe better of the an- 

 " cients, than that their methods of science were so unfruit- 

 " ful ||." It was the confident belief of this misguided man, 



that 



* Stubbe's Epistolary Discourse concerning Phlebotomy, passim. 4to. Lond. 

 1671. 



+ Lord Bacon's Relation of the Sweating Sickness examined, p. 2. 4to. Lond. 

 167L 



* Legends no Histories, p. 29. 



It Lord Bacon's Relation of the Sweating Sickness examined, Pref. p. 5. 



