What then was the end which Bacon proposed to himself? It was, to use his own emphatic expression,
(1) Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 81.
(2) De Augmentis, Lib. 1.
(3) Cogitata et visa.
"fruit.” It was the multiplying of human enjoyments and the mitigating of human sufferings. It was “the relief of man’s estate.” (1) It was “commodis humanis inservire.” (2) It was “efficaciter operari ad sublevanda vitæ humanæ incommoda.” (3) It was “dotare vitam immanam novis inventis et copiis.” (4) It was “genus humanum novis operibus et potestatibus continno dotare.” (5) This was the object of all his speculations in every department of science, in natural philosophy, in legislation, in politics, in morals.
Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrine, Utility and Progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools contemned that office as degrading; some censured it as immoral. Once indeed Posidonius, a distinguished writer of the age of Cicero and Cæsar, so far forgot himself as to enumerate, among the hum-bier blessings which mankind owed to philosophy, the discovery of the principle of the arch, and the introduction of the use of metals. This eulogy was considered as an affront, and was taken up with proper spirit. Seneca vehemently disclaims these insulting compliments.6 Philosophy, according to him, has nothing to do with teaching men to rear arched roofs over their heads. The true philosopher does not care
1 Advancement of Learning, Book 1.
2 De Angmentis, Lib. 7. C:ip. 1.
3 Ib. Lib. 2. Cap. 2.
4 Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 81.
5 Cogilata el ma.
6 Seneca, Epist. 90.
whether he has an arched roof or any roof. Philosophy has nothing to do with teaching men the uses of metals. She teaches us to be independent of all material substances, of all mechanical contrivances. The wise man lives according; to nature. Instead of attempting to add to the physical comforts of his species, he regrets that his lot was not cast in that golden age when the human race had no protection against the cold but the skins of wild beasts, no screen from the sun but a cavern. To impute to such a man any share in the invention or improvement of a plough, a ship, or a mill, is an insult. “In my own time,” says Seneca, “there have been inventions of this sort, transparent windows, tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building, short-hand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul. Non est, inqueim, instrumentorum ad usas necessaries opfex.” If the non were left out, this last sentence would be no bad description of the Baconian philosophy, and would, indeed, very much resemble several expressions in the Novum Organum. “We shall next be told,” exclaims Seneca, “that the first shoemaker was a philosopher.” For our own part, if we are forced to make our choice between the first shoemaker, and the author of the three books On Anger, we pronounce for the shoemaker. It may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept any body from being angry. It is very reluctantly that Seneca can be brought to confess that any philosopher had ever paid the smallest attention to any thing that could possibly promote what vulgar people would consider as the well-being of mankind. He labors to clear Democritus from the disgraceful imputation of having made the first arch, and Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived the potter’s wheel. He is forced to own that such a thing might happen; and it may also happen, he tells us, that a philosopher may be swift of foot. But it is not in his character of philosopher that he either wins a race or invents a machine. Iso, to be sure. The business of a philosopher was to declaim in praise of poverty, with two millions sterling out at usury, to meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of luxury, in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns, to rant about liberty, while fawning on the insolent and pampered freedmen of a tyrant, to celebrate the divine beauty of virtue with the same pen which had just before written a defence of the murder of a mother by a son.
From the cant of this philosophy, a philosophy meanly proud of its own unprofitableness, it is delightful to turn to the lessons of the great English teacher. We can almost forgive all the faults of Bacon’s life when we read that singularly graceful and dignified passage: “Ego certe, ut de me ipso, quod res est, loquar, et in iis que nunc edo, et in iis quæ in posterum meditor, dignitatem ingenii et nominis mei, si qua sit, sæpius sciens et volens projicio, dum commodis humanis inserviam; quique arehitectus fortasse in phi-losophia et scientiis esse debeam, etiam operarius, et bajulus, et quidvis demum fio, cum baud pauca pue omnino fieri necesse sit, alii an tern ob innatam superbiam subterfugiant, ipse sustineam et exsequar.” (1) This philanthropia, which, as he said in one of the most remarkable of his early letters, “was so fixed in his mind, as it could not be removed,” this majestic humility, this persuasion that nothing can be too insignificant for the attention of the wisest, which is not too insignificant to give pleasure or pain to the meanest, is the great characteristic distinction, the essential spirit of the Baconian philosophy. We trace it in all that Bacon has written on Physics, on Laws, on Morals. And we conceive that from this peculiarity all the other peculiarities of his system directly and almost necessarily sprang.
The spirit which appears in the passage of Seneca to which we have referred, tainted the whole body of the ancient philosophy from the time of Socrates downwards, and took possession of intellects with which that of Seneca cannot for a moment be compared. It pervades the dialogues of Plato. It may be distinctly traced in many parts of the works of Aristotle. Bacon has dropped hints, from which it may be inferred that, in his opinion, the prevalence of this feeling was in a great measure to be attributed to the influence of Socrates. Our great countryman evidently did not consider the revolution which Socrates effected in philosophy as a happy event, and constantly maintained that the earlier Greek speculators, Democritus in particular, were, on the whole, superior to their more celebrated successors. (2)
Assuredly if the tree which Socrates planted and
1 De Augmentis, Lib. 7. Cap. 1.
2 Novum, Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 71, 79. De Augmeniis,
Lib. 3. Cap. 4. De Principiis atque originibus. Cogitala el
visa. Redargutio philosophiarum.