dispatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of a few." He is an outspoken militarist; he deplores the growth of industry as unfitting men for war, and bewails long peace as lulling the warrior in man. Nevertheless, he recognizes the importance of raw materials: "Solon said well to Croesus (when in ostentation Croesus showed him his gold), 'Sir, if any other come that hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold." 2 Like Aristotle, he has some advice on avoiding revolutions. "The surest way to prevent seditions is to take away the matter of them; for if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire. Neither doth it follow that the suppressing of fames" (i. e., discussion) "with too much severity should be a remedy of troubles; for the despising of them many times checks them best, and the going about to stop them but makes a wonder long-lived. . . . The matter of sedition is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment. The causes and mo tives of seditions are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending a people joineth them in a common cause." The cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends. "Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions . . . that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united." 3 A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth: "Money is like muck, N not good unless it be spread." 1 But this does not mean socialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; "the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people"; 2 and "Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?" 3 What Bacon wants is first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for administration; and above all a philosopher-king. "It is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned governors." 4 He mentions Seneca, Antoninus Pius and Aurelius; it was his hope that to their names posterity would add his own. IV. THE GREAT RECONSTRUCTION Unconsciously, in the midst of his triumphs, his heart was with philosophy. It had been his nurse in youth, it was his companion in office, it was to be his consolation in prison and disgrace. He lamented the ill-repute into which, he thought, philosophy had fallen, and blamed an arid scholasticism. "People are very apt to contemn truth, on account of the controversies raised about it, and to think those all in a wrong way who never meet.” 5 "The sciences . . . . stand almost at a stay, without receiving any augmentations worthy of the human race; . . . . . and all the tradition and succession of schools is still a succession of masters and scholars, not of inventors. . . . In what is now done in the matter of science there is only a whirling about, and perpetual agitation, ending where it began." All through the years of his rise and exaltation he brooded over the restoration or reconstruction of philosophy; "Meditor Instaurationem philosophiae.” 7 1 Ibid. 2 In Nichol, ii, 149. 3 Adv. of L., vi, 3. 4 Ibid., i. 5 Ibid. 6 Preface to Magna Instauratio. He planned to centre all his studies around this task. First of all, he tells us in his "Plan of the Work," he would write some Introductory Treatises, explaining the stagnation of philosophy though the posthumous persistence of old methods, and outlining his proposals for a new beginning. Secondly he would attempt a new Classification of the Sciences, allocating their material to them, and listing the unsolved problems in each field. Thirdly, he would describe his new method for the Interpretation of Nature. Fourthly, he would try his busy hand at actual natural science, and investigate the Phenomena of Nature. Fifthly, he would show the Ladder of the Intellect, by which the writers of the past had mounted towards the truths that were now taking form out of the background of medieval verbiage. Sixthly, he would attempt certain Anticipations of the scientific results which he was confident would come from the use of his method. And lastly, as Second (or Applied) Philosophy, he would picture the utopia which would flower out of all this budding science of which he hoped to be the prophet. The whole would constitute the Magna Instauratio, the Great Reconstruction of Philosophy.1 It was a magnificent enterprise, and except for Aristotle -without precedent in the history of thought. It would dif 1 Bacon's actual works under the foregoing heads are chiefly these: I. De Interpretatione Naturae Proemium (Introduction to the Interpretation of Nature, 1603); Redargutio Philosophiarum (A Criticism of Philosophies, 1609). II. The Advancement of Learning (1603-5); translated as De Augmentis Scientiarum, 1522). III. Cogitata et Visa (Things Thought and Seen, 1607); Filum Labyrinthi (Thread of the Labyrinth, 1606); Novum Organum (The New Organon, 1608-20). IV. Historia Naturalis (Natural History, 1622); Descriptio Globi Intellectualis (Description of the Intellectual Globe, 1612). V. Sylva Sylvarum (Forest of Forests, 1624). VI. De Principiis (On Origins, 1621). VII. The New Atlantis (1624). Note. All of the above but The New Atlantis and The Advancement of Learning were written in Latin; and the latter was translated into Latin by Bacon and his aides, to win for it a European audience. Since historians and critics always use the Latin titles in their references, these are here given for the convenience of the student. fer from every other philosophy in aiming at practice rather than at theory, at specific concrete goods rather than at speculative symmetry. Knowledge is power, not mere argument or ornament; “it is not an opinion to be held . . . but a work to be done; and I . . . am laboring to lay the foundation not of any sect or doctrine, but of utility and power." " 1 Here, for the first time, are the voice and tone of modern science. 1. The Advancement of Learning To produce works, one must have knowledge. "Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed." 2 Let us learn the laws of nature, and we shall be her masters, as we are now, in ignorance, her thralls; science is the road to utopia. But in what condition this road is-tortuous, unlit, turning back upon itself, lost in useless by-paths, and leading not to light but to chaos. Let us then begin by making a survey of the state of the sciences, and marking out for them their proper and distinctive fields; let us "seat the sciences each in its proper place"; 3 examine their defects, their needs, and their possibilities; indicate the new problems that await their light; and in general "open and stir the earth a little about the roots" of them.4 This is the task which Bacon set himself in The Advancement of Learning. "It is my intention," he writes, like a king entering his realm, "to make the circuit of knowledge, noticing what parts lie waste and uncultivated, and abandoned by the industry of man; with a view to engage, by a faithful mapping out of the deserted tracts, the energies of public and private persons in their improvement.” 5 He would be the royal surveyor of the weed-grown soil, making straight the road, and dividing the fields among the laborers. It was a plan auda cious to the edge of immodesty; but Bacon was still young enough (forty-two is young in a philosopher) to plan grea voyages. "I have taken all knowledge to be my province, he had written to Burghley in 1592; not meaning that he would make himself a premature edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, but implying merely that his work would bring him into every field, as the critic and coördinator of every science in the task of social reconstruction. The very magnitude of his purpose gives a stately magnificence to his style, and brings him at times to the height of English prose. So he ranges over the vast battle-ground in which human research struggles with natural hindrance and human ignorance; and in every field he sheds illumination. He attaches great importance to physiology and medicine; he exalts the latter as regulating "a musical instrument of much and exquisite workmanship easily put out of tune." 1 But he objects to the lax empiricism of contemporary doctors, and their facile tendency to treat all ailments with the same prescription -usually physic. "Our physicians are like bishops, that have the keys of binding and loosing, but no more." 2 They rely too much on mere haphazard, uncoördinated individual experience; let them experiment more widely, let them illuminate human with comparative anatomy, let them dissect and if necessary vivisect; and above all, let them construct an easily accessible and intelligible record of experiments and results. Bacon believes that the medical profession should be permitted to ease and quicken death (euthanasy) where the end would be otherwise only delayed for a few days and at the cost of great pain; but he urges the physicians to give more study to the art of prolonging life. "This is a new part" of medicine, "and deficient, though the most noble of all; for if it may be supplied, medicine will not then be wholly versed in sordid cures, nor physicians be honored only for necessity, but as dispensers of the greatest earthly happiness that could well be 1 De Aug., iv. 2 Adv. of L., iv, 2. |