His Fall.—The charges against him were varied and numerous, and easy of proof. He had received bribes; he had given false judgments for money; he had perverted justice to secure the smiles of Buckingham, the favorite; and when a commission was appointed to examine these charges he was convicted. With abject humility, he acknowledged his guilt, and implored the pity of his judges. The annals of biography present no sorrier picture than this. "Upon advised consideration of the charges," he wrote, "descending into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so far as I am able, I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence. O my lords, spare a broken reed!"
It is useless for his defenders, among whom the chief are Mr. Basil Montagu and Mr. Hepworth Dixon, to inform us that judges in that day were ill paid, and that it was the custom to receive gifts. If Bacon had a defence to make and did not make it, he was a coward or a sycophant: if what he said is true, he was a dishonest man, an unjust judge. He was sentenced to pay a fine of £40,000, and to be imprisoned in the Tower at the king's pleasure; the fine was remitted, and the imprisonment lasted but two days, a result, no doubt foreseen, of his wretched confession. This was the end of his public career. In retirement, with a pension of £1,200, making, with his other means, an annual income of £2,500, this "meanest of mankind" set himself busily to work to prove to the world that he could also be the "wisest and brightest;"[33] a duality of fame approached by others, but never equalled. He was, in fact, two men in one: a dishonest, truckling politician, and a large-minded and truth-seeking philosopher.
Begins His Philosophy.—Retired in disgrace from his places at court, the rest of his life was spent in developing his Instauratio Magna, that revolution in the very principles and institutes of science—that philosophy which, in the words of Macaulay, "began in observations, and ended in arts." A few words will suffice to close his personal history. While riding in his coach, he was struck with the idea that snow would arrest animal putrefaction. He alighted, bought a fowl, and stuffed it with snow, with his own hands. He caught cold, stopped at the Earl of Arundel's mansion, and slept in damp sheets; fever intervened, and on Easter Day, 1626, he died, leaving his great work unfinished, but in such condition that the plan has been sketched for the use of the philosophers who came after him.
He is said to have made the first sketch of the Instauratio when he was twenty-six years old, but it was much modified in later years. He fondly called it also Temporis Partus Maximus, the greatest birth of Time. After that he wrote his Advancement of Learning in 1605, which was to appear in his developed scheme, under the title De Augmentis Scientiarum, written in 1623. His work advanced with and was modified by his investigations.
In 1620 he wrote the Novum Organum, which, when it first appeared, called forth from James I. the profane bon mot that it was like the peace of God, "because it passeth all understanding." Thus he was preparing the component parts, and fitting them into his system, which has at length become quite intelligible. A clear notion of what he proposed to himself and what he accomplished, may be found in the subjoined meagre sketch, only designed to indicate the outline of that system, which it will require long and patient study to master thoroughly.
The Great Restoration, (Magna Instauratio.)—He divided it into six parts, bearing a logical relation to each other, and arranged in the proper order of study.
I. Survey and extension of the sciences, (De Augmentis Scientiarum.) "Gives the substance or general description of the knowledge which mankind at present possesses." That is, let it be observed, not according to the received system and divisions, but according to his own. It is a new presentation of the existent state of knowledge, comprehending "not only the things already invented and known, but also those omitted and wanted," for he says the intellectual globe, as well as the terrestrial, has its broils and deceits.
In the branch "De Partitione Scientiarum," he divides all human learning into History, which uses the memory; Poetry, which employs the imagination; and Philosophy, which requires the reason: divisions too vague and too few, and so overlapping each other as to be of little present use. Later classifications into numerous divisions have been necessary to the progress of scientific research.
II. Precepts for the interpretation of nature, (Novum Organum.) This sets forth "the doctrine of a more perfect use of the reason, and the true helps of the intellectual faculties, so as to raise and enlarge the powers of the mind." "A kind of logic, by us called," he says, "the art of interpreting nature: differing from the common logic ... in three things, the end, the order of demonstrating, and the grounds of inquiry."
Here he discusses induction; opposes the syllogism; shows the value and the faults of the senses—as they fail us, or deceive us—and presents in his idola the various modes and forms of deception. These idola, which he calls the deepest fallacies of the human mind, are divided into four classes: Idola Tribus, Idola Specus, Idola Fori, Idola Theatri. The first are the errors belonging to the whole human race, or tribe; the second—of the den—are the peculiarities of individuals; the third—of the market-place—are social and conventional errors; and the fourth—those of the theatre—include Partisanship, Fashion, and Authority.