Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies. Volume I

by Anonymous

This planetary influence appears to have been firmly believed in by Bacon, and in particular the effect of the constellations on the several parts of the human body. Perhaps he was rather prejudiced in favour of a doctrine which was condemned by the same men who thought mathematics and philosophy savoured of heresy. And it must be remembered that the pretended science was almost universally allowed existence, even by those who considered its use unlawful; nor can we infer that the church disbelieved it, because that body discouraged it, any more than that it rejected infernal spirits, because it anathematized magic.

We must draw a wide distinction between the things which Bacon relates as upon credible authority, and the opinions which he professes himself to entertain from his own investigations. In almost every page we meet with something now considered extremely absurd, and with reason. But before the day of printing there was very little publishing: a book which was written in one country, found its way but slowly into others, one copy at a time; and a man of learning seldom met those with whom he could discuss the probability of any narrative. The adoption of the principle that a story must be rejected because it is strange, would then have amounted to a disbelief of all that had been written on physics; a state of mind to which we cannot conceive any one of that age bringing himself. Nor can we rightly decide what opinion to form of Bacon as a philosopher, until we know how much he rejected, as well as how much he believed. These remarks apply particularly to his alchemy: he does not say he had made gold himself, but that others had asserted themselves to have made it; and his account of the drink by which men had lived hundreds of years is a relation taken from another. Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary, has overlooked this distinction, and has much to say in consequence. It was, however, no very strange matter that Bacon, who (if the 'Speculum Alchemiae' be really his, of which, from the style, we doubt) believed with many others that sulphur and mercury were the first principles of all bodies, should endeavour to compound gold, or should give credit to the assertions of those who professed to have done so. But there is not in Bacon's alchemy any direction for the use of prayers, fasting, or planetary hours.

The great points by which Bacon is known are his reputed knowledge of gunpowder and of the telescope. With regard to the former, it is not at all clear that what we call gunpowder is intended, though some detonating mixture, of which saltpetre is an ingredient, is spoken of as commonly known. The passage is as follows:—

"Some things disturb the ear so much, that if they were made to happen suddenly by night, and with sufficient skill, no city or army could bear them. No noise of thunder could compare with them. Some things strike terror on the sight, so that the flashes of the clouds are beyond comparison less disturbing; works similar to which Gideon is thought to have performed in the camp of the Midianites. And an instance we take from a childish amusement, which exists in many parts of the world, to wit, that with an instrument as large as the human thumb, by the violence of the salt called saltpetre, so horrible a noise is made by the rupture of so slight a thing as a bit of parchment, that it is thought to exceed loud thunder, and the flash is stronger than the brightest lightning."—Opus Majus, p. 474.

There are passages in the work 'De Secretis Operibus,' &c. (cited by Hutton, 'Dictionary,' article "Gunpowder"), which expressly mention sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre as ingredients. But, independently of the claim of the Chinese and Indians, there is an author, Marcus Graecus, whose work, 'Liber Ignium' (now existing only in Latin translations from the Greek), is cited by Dr. Jebb from a manuscript in the possession of Dr. Mead, and who appears to have been considered by both as older than Bacon. Dr. Hutton, into whose hands Dr. Mead's manuscripts passed, found this writer mentioned by an Arabic physician of the ninth century. Graecus gives the receipt for gunpowder, namely, one part of sulphur, two of willow-charcoal, and six of saltpetre. Two manuscript copies of Graecus were also found in the Royal Library of Paris. But it does not appear that Graecus was known for a long time after Bacon: even Tartaglia knew nothing of him; for he says, in his work on Artillery, that the oldest writers known to him use equal parts of the three ingredients.

With regard to the telescope, it must be admitted that Bacon had conceived the instrument, though there is no proof that he carried his conception into practice, or invented it. His words are these:—"We can so shape transparent substances, and so arrange them with respect to our sight and objects, that rays can be broken and bent as we please, so that objects may be seen far off or near, under whatever angle we please; and thus from an incredible distance we may read the smallest letters, and number the grains of dust and sand, on account of the greatness of the angle under which we see them; and we may manage so as hardly to see bodies, when near to us, on account of the smallness of the angle under which we cause them to be seen: for vision of this sort is not a consequence of distance, except as that affects the magnitude of the angle. And thus a boy may seem a giant, and a man a mountain, &c." The above contains a true description of a telescope; but if Bacon had constructed one, he would have found that there are impediments to the indefinite increase of the magnifying power; and still more that a boy does not appear a giant, but a boy at a smaller distance.

That the remarks of Bacon are derived from reflection and imagination only, is further apparent from his asserting that a small army could be made to appear very large, and that the sun and moon could be made to descend, to all appearance, down below, and stand over the head of the enemy. At the same time it is worth notice, that these ideas of Bacon did, in after times, produce either the telescope, or some modification of it, consisting in the magnifying of images produced by reflection, and that before the date either of Jansen or Galileo. Thomas Digges, son of Leonard Digges, in his 'Stratiotikos,' London, 1590, page 359 (second edition, the first being 1579), thus speaks of what his father had done, in the presence, as he asserts, of numerous living eye-witnesses:—

"And such was his Felicitie and happie successe, not only in these conclusions, but also in y^e Optikes and Catoptikes, that he was able by Perspectiue Glasses, duely seituate upon conuenient angles, in such sort to discouer every particularitie of the country round about, wheresoeuer the Sunne beames might pearse: as sithence Archimedes (Bakon of Oxford onely excepted) I have not read of any in action euer able by means natural to perform the like. Which partly grew by the aid he had by one old written book of the same Bakon's Experiments, that by strange aduenture, or rather Destinie, came to his hands, though chiefely by conioyning continuall laborious Practise with his Mathematicall Studies."

And the same Thomas Digges, in his 'Pantometria,' London, 1571, Preface (republished in 1591), had previously given the same story, with more detail, omitting, however, all mention of Bacon. He says that his father—"sundrie times hath by proportionall Glasses duely situate in conuenient angles, not onely discouered things farre off, read letters, numbred peeces of money with the very coyne and superscription thereof, cast by some of his freends of purpose upon Downes in open Fields, but also seuen miles off declared what hath beene doone at that instant in priuate places. There are yet living diuerse (of these his dooings) Oculati Testes."

The question has been agitated whether the invention of spectacles is due to Bacon, or whether they had been introduced just before he wrote. He certainly describes them, and explains why a plane convex glass magnifies. But he seems to us to speak of them as already in use. "Hence this instrument is useful to old persons and those who have weak eyes."