tendency, or from this tendency explained his moral course. Such a relation would be more than analogy, it would be a relation of cause and effect. Of such an immediate influence of the scientific upon the moral character, we can only speak with great caution, inasmuch as the moral character precedes the scientific in order of time, and human characters generally do not form themselves before the mirror of science. Nevertheless, there is between the two modes of expressing the mental individuality a natural homogeneity, which does not consist in the one following the other, but proceeds from this: that the genius of the man directs both to the same ends; for the genius of a great individual remains the same in all its utterances. Leibnitz, with his personal character, could never have become a philosopher like Spinoza, nor Bacon like Descartes. The scientific direction pursued by Bacon fully corresponded to the peculiarity of his nature, to his wants and inclinations; and this direction was greatly favoured by his moral disposition. Indeed, without such a cooperation of the mental powers, no great intellectual achievement is possible.

It is wrong to blame or pity Bacon because, being a scientific character of the first rank, he was at the same time too ambitious to prefer the repose of a scientific life to the charms of high

and influential office. Bacon himself, in his old age, has lamented this as a misfortune, but not as a weakness. The misfortune was his destiny, and likewise the destiny of his science. Not only he, but his science also, was too ambitious, too practical*, too much open to the world, to bury itself in seclusion. To advance the power of man is, on one occasion, called by Bacon himself the highest degree of ambition.† And this ambition belonged to his science; this effort was its first and last thought; on account of this very ambition Bacon became a scientific character. His science was of a kind that could not endure a life of quiet retirement; it would rather float along the stream of the world than remain in a state of tranquil and secluded contemplation. "A talent is cultivated in seclusion, a character in the stream of the world." To adopt these words of Göthe, the home of Baconian science was the school, not of talent, but of character,that is to say, it was worldly life on a grand scale. To this his philosophy and all his efforts were inclined. He decided early in life that a

* "Thatenlustig," literally "delighting in action."-J. O. † Compare Nov. Org. i. 129. ; also vide Chap. III. of this

work.

"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,

Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt."

science secluded from the world must be narrow and sterile, and that the wretched plight from which he wished to rescue philosophy was partly to be explained by the life of retirement usually adopted by learned men. He judged that the knowledge of these persons was as narrow as their cells, as the convents and cloisters in which they were secluded, in ignorance of the world, nature, and their own times. So diametrically—both from inclination and on principle—was the scientific mind of Bacon opposed to the condition of learning that had continued down to his own time, that he necessarily felt an impulse to alter even its outward form of existence, and to exchange the life of the cloister for the life of the world. The student of the cell was transformed into a man of the world, who, both in science and in practical life, aimed at the same lofty goal of influential power. Doubtless his practical career demanded a heavy expenditure of time and labour; and thus there was so much less to bestow on scientific labour. But are we, on that account, to wish that Bacon had devoted his whole life, or the greater portion of it, to secluded science? This would be neither more nor less than wishing that Bacon had been endowed with another sort of scientific mind; that he had been another philosopher than he actually was; - this would be over

looking the peculiar character of Baconian science. If we take this peculiar character into consideration, we find there is no contradiction implied in the fact that Bacon at the same time directed his energies both to science and to the acquisition of office. Even in the name of his science he could require the scholar to learn practical life from his own experience, not merely theoretically, as by a bird's-eye view, but by actual participation. This, indeed, was what Bacon desired. In a scientific spirit he reproached the learned for their ordinary deficiency in a virtue of the understanding that could only be acquired in practical life,—namely, a knowledge of business and political prudence.*

However, the manner in which Bacon displayed himself as a political character,- his own especial acts in this capacity seem diametrically opposed to his scientific greatness. This opposition has often been pointed out and lamented. Bacon has even been set up as an example to show how widely distinct from each other are the scientific

* De Dign. et Augm. Scientiarum, lib. viii. cap. 2. (near the beginning). -"Doctrinam de Negotiis pro rei momento tractavit adhuc nemo, cum magna tam litterarum quam litteratorum existimationis jactura. Ab hac enim radice pullulet illud malum, quod notam eruditis inussit; nimirum, eruditionem et prudentiam civilem rarò admodum conjungi."

and moral tendencies of a man -to how high a degree of internal contradiction the variance between these two characters can be brought. Mr. Macaulay, especially, has of late pushed this contradiction to such an extreme point that it seems insoluble, and the character of Bacon appears inexplicable. Macaulay pleads against Montagu on the subject of Bacon's moral worth; and it is well so to compare the two biographers (of whom the second is the panegyrist), that one may serve as a corrective to the other. For our own part, we shall neither defend nor attack Bacon's character, but simply explain it, and hence we look here for that intrinsic harmony which belongs to every important character. Taking everything into consideration, we must confess that the contradiction between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon the political character does not appear to us so violent as it is represented by Macaulay. Neither was the one (to use the expression of Macaulay, who infelicitously cites a Baconian figure of speech),―neither was the one a "soaring angel," nor the other a "creeping snake." Neither on the one side is there pure light, nor on the other is there mere shade, but on both sides is a compound of both. Of all the images that could be selected, none could be more unhappy than one which suggests a com