NATURAL MAGIC.

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from superstitious astrology, and in the same manner he distinguishes natural magic from the ordinary and frivolous sort, with which he classes alchemy and other dreams that have amused mankind from the earliest ages. Bacon very often speaks of the alchemists, especially when he means to give an example of the ordinary empirists with their uncritical and unmethodical way of proceeding. Without having themselves pursued a scientific object, they have paved the way to physics and chemistry by means of their researches. Bacon ingeniously compares them with those sons in the fable, whose father bequeathed them a treasure in the vineyard for which they had to seek. They dug round the vineyard without finding the gold, but by their researches they had tilled the fertile soil, and the harvest proved to be the promised treasure.

Natural magic, in Bacon's sense of the word, is the application of the knowledge of nature. Granted that we have learned the forms of nature, the qualities of bodies and their ultimate conditions, the possibility arises, as far as theory is concerned, of producing these qualities ourselves, and operating creatively like nature. If now to the theoretic is added the practical possibility-namely, material means-as the necessary vehicles of effectiveness, natural miracles, as it

were, will be the result. We need not decide (according to Bacon) whether what the alchemists sought was attainable or not; at all events their method was wrong. Before we try to make gold we must become acquainted with the natural forms of gold, and all the conditions upon which these qualities infallibly appear. The triumphs of mechanical and chemical invention in our own times accomplish and at the same time explain the problems which Bacon conceived under the name of natural magic, and recommended to the future. "When magic," says Bacon, "is combined with science, this natural magic will accomplish deeds that will bear to the earlier superstitious experiments the same relation that the real acts of Cæsar bear to the imaginary exploits of King Arthur; that is to say, they will be as deeds to tales, where more is done by the former than dreamed in the latter."*

As aids to inventive natural science, Bacon desires a history of human discoveries, which shall render especially prominent all that has appeared impossible to man; and also, for convenient survey, a list of useful experiments (catalogus polychrestorum).

* This passage is not to be found in Bacon as it stands here, but it is formed from expressions in "De Augmentis," III. 5., which also occur in the "Advancement."—J. O.

3. MATHEMATICS,

With Bacon, do not form an independent but a supplementary science; they are an aid to natural philosophy. Pure mathematics consist of geometry and arithmetic, the knowledge of figures and numbers, of continuous and discrete quantities, in a word, they are the knowledge of nature or of abstract quantity. But quantity is among the forms of nature; therefore mathematics (in Bacon's sense of the word) belong to the knowledge of natural forms, that is, to metaphysics. Their scientific value lies in their contribution to the interpretation of nature. Their position is similar to that which Bacon assigns to logic. Both are subordinate to natural philosophy, from which both have unjustifiably separated themselves, so as to assume an independent rank of their own. Both, therefore, must be so connected anew with the physical sciences as to become mere aids to the latter. Thus we have a striking illustration of the difference between the Baconian and the Greek mode of thought. The forms of the Platonic metaphysics were ideals or antitypes, those of the Baconian metaphysics are powers. Plato considered mathematics the portico of metaphysics;

Bacon regarded them as a mere aid and appendix.

IV. ANTHROPOLOGY,

As the science of man, in the more extended sense of the word, embraces everything human. It treats of human nature and human society, whence it may be divided into psychology and politics. Before it enters upon the separate divisions of human nature, it regards their undivided unity from two points of view.

In the first place it estimates the condition of humanity, with respect to its dignity and indignity, its greatness and its wretchedness, its bright and shadowy sides. A description of the latter is not set down by Bacon among his desiderata; on the contrary, he finds that human misery is sufficiently illustrated by a copious literature of philosophical and theological writings, and, as it seems, has no desire to increase such "sweet and wholesome "* recreation. He would rather, like Hiero (according to Pindar) pluck the blossoms of human virtue, and introduce the science of man with a description of what is great in humanity, confirmed by examples from history. He would decorate the porch of anthropology with statues

* "Res et dulcis simul et salubris.”—De Augm. IV. 1., p. 581.

of the "summities" of the human race. Every great deed effected by the power of the human mind and the human will, as manifested in the heroes of every time and tendency, should here be brought before us by abundant examples.

The second point of view, which is more intimately connected with anthropology, refers to the unity of the human individual, to the relation between the soul and the body, as a consequence of which the soul expresses itself by means of the body, while the body reacts by impressions upon the soul. With reference to the body, considered as an expression of the soul, Bacon here gives the idea of a physiognomy-a science that, towards the end of the following century, was elaborated in such a surprising manner by Lavater. Bacon approximates closely to Lavater's system. He desires a new physiognomy, based upon real facts and observations, without chiromantic dreams or anything of the sort. Aristotle's notion of physiognomy was very imperfect. Not only are the peculiarities of the soul expressed in the fixed lineaments of the body, but still more are the inclinations and passions expressed by the gestures, by the movable parts of the human face, especially the mouth. Thus expressions that have become habitual and permanent in the countenance furnish