As has been mentioned Scholastic Learning attained its point of culmination towards the end of the thirteenth century. Two monks the Dominican Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan Duns Scotus became the founders of two philosophical sects, the former raising the Intellect, the latter the Will to the supreme principle of philosophy, thus renewing the old quarrel between Nominalism and Realism, and sowing the germs of the decline and final dissolution of the Schools. By this scission of ideas, the unity of Faith and Knowledge, the corner stone of their philosophy, was suspended; Science was gradually delivered from its unfruitful union with Theology, and at last asserted its complete independence of ecclesiastical authority thus paving the way to Modern Philosophy; while religious consciousness, tired of the yoke of Rome, loudly called for a Reformation of the Church.

One of the first announcements of the great revolution which was about to take place in the spirit of the times which inaugurated the new era of philosophy, was the revival of classical literature in Italy. The study of the literary treasures inherited from ancient Greece and Rome, had, during the Middle Ages, been totally neglected; even Platonic and Aristotelian Philosophy was studied from inaccurate latin translations and other secondary sources. The spirit of classic life, all sense of beauty of form, and the pure and noble taste which is so much admired in classical authors, had died away. Dante and Petrarch, towards the middle of the fourteenth century, were the first to revive the credit of the Roman classic poets, which movement was greatly favoured by the powerful patronage and refined taste of the Medicean Court. The chief impulse was given by those learned Greeks, who, obliged to leave Constantinople (1453), fixed their abodes in Italy, and, by their bold teachings, roused the minds of Western Europe from the state of lethargy in which it had slumbered for so many generations. Pletho, Bessarion, George of Trebisond conducted their disciples to the fountain-heads of Grecian literature, and imbued them with a thirst of knowledge hitherto unprecedented. A decisive blow was now struck at the cold, stiff mannerism which had hitherto prevailed in literature; new ideas became current; a bold and independent spirit animated literary productions; like the fabulous bird, the free, universal genius of antiquity rose again from its ashes, and fired tho souls and warmed the hearts of the civilized world. The literary sun which had risen in

Vol. I. Mid. Ages. Also Buckle contains some excellent pages. History of civilisation. Vol. II. chap. VI.

Italy shot its rays beyond the Alps. Germany had long felt the superiority of the Italians, and conscious of her defects of language and style, sent her sons to Italy to draw at the new fountains of literature. Dalberg, Spiegelberg, Langen brought back to their country, and diffused among their hearers, the same literary zeal by which they themselves were animated. The seeds they cast yielded thousand-fold; classical studies found a most fruitful soil; men like Reuchlin, Melancthon and Erasmus were not only the expositors of the Old and New Testament, but the creators of that taste for philology and classical learning, for which Germany has been always so justly celebrated. The salutary movement was soon communicated to the remotest corners of Europe, and very soon liberty of conscience and liberty of thought (libere philosophari) resounded from one end to the other, and were proclaimed essential conditions of Progress and Enlightenment.

The torch which Bacon wished to light up in the gloomy night of Science (facis accensa in philosophiae tenebris) had now begun to glow in the heart of Europe, and its radiance was strong enough to show the uncouth forms and monstrous shapes which philosophy had assumed under the domination of the Schools. The one hundred and fifty years which had elapsed from the invention of printing till the birth of Bacon was a period pregnant of innovation in one or the other department of human skill and knowledge. The Reformation, without aiming at a complete emancipation of the mind from ancient modes of thought, was of eminent service in overthrowing some of the most vicious institutions founded on the immutability of dogmatical tradition, and in erecting new ones more compatible with the requirements of common sense. The old philosophy, the handmaid of the Church, was considered part and parcel of ecclesiastical arrogance and was rejected by the Reformers; hence the war against Peripatetic Learning which raged throughout the whole of the sixteenth century, and which was finally concluded by the triumphs of the Cartesian Philosophy. In almost every domain of thought the great intellectual thaw was perceptible; old systems were falling to pieces, and on their ruins rose that sceptic spirit under whose influence the inexhaustible powers and noblest qualities of the human mind have been so wonderfully developed. The improvements in navigation, the important discoveries made in geography, the impulse thereby given to international intercourse, the accumalation of riches, the display of luxury and the refinement of manners, were so many circumstances calculated to draw away the mind from cold abstractions, and concentrate it upon things which could warm the heart and

excite the imagination. Man returned again to the study of Nature and betrod once more the path from which he should have never departed.

The process of the liberation of the mind from the shackles of the Schools was therefore in full operation when Bacon appeared. Bacon is vulgarly termed the Father of experimental science, but the part he plays in the genesis of modern improvement cannot, we think, be more inappropriately designated. The paternity of experimental philosophy, like the paternity of every other great intellectual movement, cannot be ascribed to a single man. It is the common work of distinguished men in different countries, acting under the influence of the general spirit of the age. And so it is with Bacon. His work is in our opinion a happy expression, a skillful arrangement of the ideas of Scientific Reform which occupied the minds of his predecessors and contemporaries. He himself expressly declares his work to be rather a product of the times than of his mind. ,,Ipse certe (ut ingenue fatear) soleo aestimare hoc opus magis pro partu temporis quam ingenii."2) In the first place we are convinced that Bacon was profoundly impressed by the works of his great namesake, of that enlightened monk of the Middle Ages, whose prophetic mind gleamed, a solitary beacon, through the universal darkness by which it was surrounded. Roger Bacon (1214—1294), like his successor Francis, admired the great mind of the Founder of Peripatetic Philosophy, but as heartily despised the degenerate systems into which his teaching had been degraded by ecclesiastical influence. But he could not do so with impunity; because he once dared to give vent to his ideas of reform, he was cruelly persecuted by his contemporaries, and allowed to languish in a dungeon almost till the hour of his death. His Opus Majus contains, as it were, the groundwork of the Novum Organum. Like the Lord Chancellor, who, in his so-called idols minutely analyzes the subjective impediments to the progress of human knowledge, the medieval monk ascribes the deficiencics of Science to four causes: to the authority of example, to the respect of old customs, to over-complaisance towards the opinions of the vulgar, and to the pride and arrogance of false science. Like his successor, he considers a speedy reform urgent. This must be effected: First, by a profound study of languages; without which ignorance is perpetuated, and the ideas of our ancestors disfigured by inaccurate versions; secondly, by a diligent study of mathematics, as the best means of sharpening the faculties;

2) Works. Novum Organum. Dedicatio.

thirdly, by the study of optics, so as to increase the powers of exact observation; and fourthly, by judicious experiments, by which scientific hypotheses are to be proved and verified. Like his successor, he expects much from posterity and from the progress of learning, and prophesies the day when the accumulated work of generations will reveal the most surprising secrets of Nature. These are all views intimately allied with those expressed by Bacon in his Novum Organum, perhaps in choicer and more elegant language, but certainly not with more precision and grasp of thought than his great predecessor.

Italy of the sixteenth century was the country where the war against Aristotelian Philosophy raged most furiously; and from this source it was that Bacon drew many of the excellent ideas in which his works abound. The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno who, for his advanced opinions, was obliged to flee from Geneva, found an asylum in England, where he was allowed to lecture on the New-Philosophy, and was mainly instrumental in propagating the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. This took place about 1582, so that Bacon, so eager in the pursuit of knowledge, cannot possibly have been ignorant of Bruno's teachings and of his disputations with the professors of Oxford. Bacon was acquainted with the works of Campanella (1568-1639), one of the most vigorous opponents of Scholastic Philosophy, who did not cease repeating that all salvation in the domain of science was to be expected from a careful observation of natural phenomena founded on well devised and well performed experiments. He it was, who, in announcing his ideas on the improvement of science, called himself, in allusion to his name, the bell-ringer, who was first up to call others to church a saying which we find repeated under various forms in Bacon's writings. Telesio (1508-1585), whom Bacon designates as the first of the novellists („novorum hominum primum agnoscimus“), made front against the physics of Aristotle as not being founded on experience and observation, but on arbitrary suppositions and on the irrevocable decisions of reason. In his Rerum Natura he accuses his predecessors of having invented the physical world instead of observing it, of having affected the wisdom and power of God, of having neglected things real for things imaginary, of having paid more attention to what was dictated by reason than to what might be revealed by the senses and the powers of observation.

We cite these examples to show that the ideas developed by Bacon in his Great Instauration were, long previous to the appearance of his Novum Organum, prevalent among learned men, but

without order and coherence. His philosophy may be considered a systematic arrangement of the views and desires of his predecessors and contemporaries concerning a return to Nature; it was a last eloquent appeal to humanity to give over their infructuose reasonings, and set about the hard work of erecting a philosophy founded on Experimental Inquiry. This we consider to be Bacon's chief merit in the cause of Science. He knew how to methodize current thought, and by his elegant and majestic diction could rouse the minds of men to the great work of regenerating Science. But more he could hardly do. He was undoubtedly able to conceive the scope and fecundity of the inductive system of reasoning, but he himself was not able to take an active part in the process of regeneration, and wherever he tried to do so, he was found remarkably wanting. The pars activa of his philosophy, or as he terms it, the philosophia secunda, or the result of the application of his theory to the facts revealed by experiment and observation, is a noble idea; but Bacon possessed only the theory; he was not able to eliminate the facts, and had consequently no object to which he could attach his method. He can therefore do little more than prophesy a rich harvest; having never sown, i. e. never come into close contact with the forms of physical phenomena, he cannot possibly be expected to reap.

Bacon judged of Science from a distant and elevated station, and did not much care for what was really occurring in the scientific world about him. He had scarcely a single correct notion of the most common physical process, as may be seen from his Historia Naturalis or from his articles on Heat in the second book of his Novum Organum.3) Not only this, he is completely blind to, or cannot comprehend the discoveries of his contemporaries and the speculations of those who had neither the time nor the patience of awaiting his directions. He does not know, or pretends not to know, that Leonardo da Vinci had already perfectly understood and expounded the principles of Experimental Philosophy - principles which were fully confirmed by the beautiful discoveries of Galilei. He loudly disclaims against the Philosophy of the Schools and the miserable state of Science, but is at a loss to tell us how the evils are to be remedied and an improvement effected. He certainly does fairly analyze the different sources of error, he cautions men to be on their guard against the idola; he tells them that the mind must be purged of those impediments, and that from such a mirror (expurgata jam et abrasa et aequata mentis arena) Nature is to be

3) See Liebig's Analysis. Reden und Abhandlungen. Bacon von Verulam.