Utrumque vestrum incredibili modo
Consentit astrum.
Judge Webb, of course, refers to the well-known fact that both Shakespeare and Bacon held similar views on the relationship of Art to nature, both holding that art was not something different from nature, but a part of nature. All will remember the dialogue between Perdita and Polixenes in the Winter’s Tale:
Per.: ... The fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors,
Which some call nature’s bastards; of that kind
Our rustic garden’s barren: and I care not
To get slips of them.
Pol.: ... Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
Per.: ... For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
Pol.: ... Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.
It certainly seems remarkable that the King of Bohemia should lecture the country girl on the essential identity of nature and art. It is not exactly what we should have expected. It is somewhat strange, too, to find Bacon waxing eloquent on the same subject, and to the same effect. Take the following from the De Augmentis (Lib. II, Cap. ii.): “Libenter autem historiam artium, ut historiæ naturalis speciem, constituimus: quia inveteravit prorsus opinio, ac si aliud quippiam esset ars a natura, artificialia a naturalibus.... Sed et illabitur etiam animis hominum aliud subtilius malum; nempe, ut ars censeatur solummodo tanquam additamentum quoddam, naturæ, cujus scilicet ea sit vis, ut naturam, sane, vel inchoatam perficere, vel in deterius vergentem emendare, vel impeditam liberare; minime vero penitus vertere, transmutare, aut in imis concutere possit: quod ipsum rebus humanis præproperam desperationem intulit.”
That is to say, “we very willingly treat the history of art as a form of natural history; for an opinion has long been prevalent that art is something different from nature—things artificial from things natural.... There is likewise another and more subtle error which has crept into the human mind, namely, that of considering art as merely an assistant[79] to nature, having the power indeed to finish what nature has begun, to correct her when lapsing into error, or to set her free when in bondage, but by no means to change, transmute, or fundamentally alter nature. And this has bred a premature despair in human enterprises.” He goes on to point out that, on the contrary, there is no essential difference between art and nature, things artificial being simply things natural as affected by human agency, which is a part of nature, so that in the words of Shakespeare, “the art itself is nature.”[80]
Here it may be worth while to point out that these words are not to be found in the English Advancement of Learning, first printed in 1605, but are found in the enlarged Latin version made under Bacon’s supervision, and published in 1623, the very year in which the Winter’s Tale also first saw the light in print, to wit in the First Folio. The play may, no doubt, have been written some ten years before that, but whether in its earlier form it contained all this not very appropriate philosophy concerning art and nature, it is of course impossible to say. It is said to have been written about 1611, and we find Bacon writing about the same time very much to the same effect as above quoted.[81]
Artificial selection is, therefore, after all only a form and part of natural selection, the differentia being that it is human agency which brings it into play. And that Bacon had, by one of his luminous intuitions, which are really quite as remarkable as his inductive philosophy, a foreshadowing of the theory of evolution is undeniable, for we have it plainly stated in his Natural History (Cent. VI, 525): “This work of the transmutation of plants one into another is inter magnalia naturæ; for the transmutation of species is, in vulgar philosophy, pronounced impossible, and certainly it is a thing of difficulty, and requireth deep search into nature; but seeing there appear some manifest instances of it, the opinion of impossibility is to be rejected, and the means thereof to be found out.”[82]