Is it possible that mind can progress at all, if it is for ever fixed on the earth, grovelling after barren facts and never lifted up to heaven, nor exercised in contemplation of the discoveries it has accumulated? Is it possible that the mind can ever be wise which believes that it must study for facts, and not to ‘weigh and consider?’ Must not the former for ever remain the mere basket of the rag-and-bone collector? the receptacle and dead vehicle of material things? Is it not better that the mind should be exercised, like ‘a light bird,’ in the wildest and most visionary dreams, than be reduced to such a ‘dull ass,’ or dead entity? If the student would avoid the latter, he must abandon the mere accumulation of facts for the comparing and weighing of evidence, the calm looking for results, and the deliberate generalization from the facts collected by the fact-collectors; the rag-and-bone-pickers, the hewers of wood and drawers of water of the human race. Nevertheless despise them not; they fill their allotted station in the world; they are as necessary to the thinkers as the different ranks in society are to each other. Bear in mind that Bacon never intended his system for students, or to be used as a mental exercise. He only proposed it as a means, (and confessedly the only true means) of ‘discovering the sciences,’ and not as a mode of ‘cultivating’ the mind. It was to be the exercise of the experienced and completely cultivated mind only, ‘of the man of riper years, sound in his senses, and of a clear, unbiassed mind.’[[30]] He foresaw and cautioned against its abuse by ‘vulgar minds.’ And in the sense used by him all young and learning minds are vulgar (common) minds. The specialities which must distinguish them from the common herd, are as yet unknown and hidden beneath the crust of inexperienced ignorance.
He himself earnestly prays that his own and the Aristotelian system may live together, and go hand in hand, the latter to cultivate the mind, the former to discover facts. His words so long forgotten and unheeded by his disciples are: “Let there be therefore, by joint consent, two fountains, or dispensations of doctrine, and two tribes of Philosophers, by no means enemies or strangers, but confederates and mutual auxiliaries to each other; and let there be one method of CULTIVATING, and another of DISCOVERING the sciences. Nor is ours very obvious, and to be taken at once, nor tempting to the understanding, nor suited to vulgar capacities, but solely rests upon its utility and effects” (i. e. upon the way in which it is used and the results which proceed from it). “But no one, sure, can suspect, that we desire to destroy and demolish the philosophy, the arts, and the sciences at present in use; for, on the contrary, we embrace their use, and willingly pay them all due honour and observance. For we openly declare that the things we offer, are not very conducive to these purposes (mental exercises), as they cannot be brought down to vulgar capacities, otherwise than by effects and works.”[[31]] Therefore in advocating the retention of the Aristotelian mode of thinking for students, we do but follow in the footsteps of his great opponent; who yet opposed only when that ancient philosophy was carried beyond, and out of its proper department—the cultivation of the powers of thought, into the discovery of the sciences.
“The two faculties of reason and experience,” says Bacon, “should be properly joined and coupled together.” Reason without experience (facts) he compares to a light bird; Experience, without reason to a dull ass. It is better to be the bird than the ass; it is best to be neither, and yet both. It is only by joining experience with reason that the “sober certainty” of the quadruped can be coupled with the “waking bliss,” the ecstatic heavenward flight, of the light and joyous bird. If, like Bacon, we were to endeavour to read the fable of the Sphinx, we would say that it represents the wise mind, which has united reason and experience into a beautiful form; comprehendible by man, but most hard to be comprehended. Its human head portrays that to intellectual man alone it is given to join together its other forms, the wings of a bird, reason; and the body of a quadruped, experience. It is beautiful, for such union is the perfection of wisdom, and ‘O how comely is wisdom!’ It is cruel, for many lives must be sacrificed ’ere it can be discovered, or the problem of its nature be solved.
Far different from the master himself, who saw in his philosophy the attainment of high and holy purposes, his pseudo-disciples shrink not from avowing that the material uses of philosophy are of higher import than the metaphysical. And it is because writers of no mean powers have, while setting themselves up as encomiasts and expounders of Baconism, utterly lost sight of the higher and godlike purposes which Bacon hoped to see his system promote, and have exalted only the simply mean and sordid uses, which, as tending to man’s temporal comforts, Bacon’s large heart also desired to increase, that we have so far enlarged our observations hereon; and shall, ere we conclude, set a few extracts from these modern views of Baconism in opposition to those of Bacon himself. From these we shall see that, with regard to their views of the objects of philosophy, no two systems can be more opposed than that of Bacon himself, and that of the modern utilitarians, who dare to dub themselves his disciples. The latter seek in science nothing higher than base utilitarianism, thus elevating the body at the expense of the soul; the former sought utilitarianism in company with the attainment of pure truth and the investigation of the hidden secrets of nature, thus elevating both soul and body.
It was the fault of the ancient philosophy that it endeavoured to elevate the soul at the expense of the body, and to separate that which God has joined together; it is equally the fault—but a far more baneful one—of modern utilitarianism that it endeavours to elevate the body above the soul, and treats the comfort of the former as of far higher importance than the exaltation of the latter.
Bacon alone, truly wise, sought the well-being of both; and he alone pointed out that the well-being of both lay in the same path, and might be prosecuted simultaneously. While the ancient philosophy feared to defile the soul by contact with what was falsely called the base in nature, and the utilitarian dreads to have his sordid soul elevated above the same operations,—which he equally terms base, yet loves to degrade himself to—Bacon acknowledged nothing base in nature, and feared not to study her simplest and meanest operations in the pursuit of truth. He knew that whatever advances the soul makes in knowledge and wisdom, must be made through and by means of the body; therefore, the latter was not to be despised, but by all possible ways and means to be made the efficient handmaid of the former. He knew that though the eye sees not, and the ear hears not, yet that the soul, in this mortal state, could neither see nor hear without them, and that by increasing their fact-transmitting powers, he was developing the fact-generating powers of the mind.
It was for this reason that he contemned not to give his mind to experience, to making telescopes and ear-trumpets; but nevertheless he did not regard them as the ultimate and sole end and aim of his philosophy. His views of the ends of philosophy were, as we shall presently see, to the full as high and lofty as those of Plato and the Grecian philosophers; he only sought to arrive at those ends by means different from those which they pursued. They both sought the same objects—Truth, and the discovery of the secrets of nature; but while the one foolishly did this by opposing nature, and acting in contradiction to her mandates, the other did it by following her patiently through all her devious windings.
The modern Baconian school of utilitarians errs in stopping half-way, and in mistaking what Bacon merely deemed media, for the ultimate ends of his philosophy. Whirled along by a steam-engine, informed by a telegraph, freed from pain by chloroform, the utilitarian deems suchlike products of the inductive philosophy, to be the summum bonum of its founder; forgetful that he considered such to be but the means to a higher end, and has said that “the summum bonum of human nature is the possession of Truth, for this is a heaven upon earth.”
But the better to understand this, let us contrast modern Baconism with Bacon,—“ab uno disce omnes.”
Mr. T. B. Macaulay, a masterly and deservedly popular writer, has undertaken to give a more correct analysis of the objects of Baconism than is usually entertained; but as it happens to be only an analysis of modern utilitarianism, we will avail ourselves of it as a contrast with Bacon’s own aspirations of the benefits to be derived from his system.[[32]]