REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England. Collected and edited by James Spedding, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge; Robert Leslie Ellis, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Douglas Denon Heath, Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Vols. I.-VI. London: Longman & Co. 1858.
"For my name and memory," said Bacon in his will, "I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next ages." Scarcely was he dead when the first portion of this legacy received some part of its fulfilment in the touching and often quoted words of Ben Jonson:—"My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place or honors; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men and most worthy of admiration that had been in many ages. In his adversity, I ever prayed that God would give him strength; for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest." But it may fairly be doubted whether "the next ages" have done fitly by his memory, spite of the honor that has been indiscriminately lavished upon his name as a philosopher, and the mass of praise, for the most part ignorant, beneath which his works have been buried. The world of readers has been content to take Bacon's greatness upon trust, or to form such imperfect idea of it as was to be got from acquaintance with his "Essays," the only one of his works which has ever attained popularity. Even more thorough students have, for the most part, satisfied themselves with a general view of Bacon's philosophy, dwelling on disconnected passages of ample thought or aphoristic wisdom, and rarely attempting to gain an insight into the real character of his system. Indeed, "the system of Lord Bacon" became a sort of cabalistic phrase. It meant anything and everything. It was like the English Constitution, venerable in authority and prescription, interpreted in contradictory methods, and never precisely defined. Few men undertook to study it with a zeal like that of Homer and his friend Lord Webb Seymour, when, in days of enthusiasm, they read and re-read the "De Augmentis" and the "Novum Organum," and Homer planned to do what Dr. Whewell seems to suppose he has done, bring Bacon up to the present time, by writing a work upon the basis of his, which should furnish a complete review of modern knowledge. Still, it has been part of an English birthright to hold Bacon as the restorer of the sciences, the inventor or at least the re-inventor of the inductive method, and the father of all discovery since his time. These notions have been held firmly, while more special ones concerning his system and himself have been, for the most part, vague or unformed.
In great part, this fact is the result of the condition in which Lord Bacon left his works, the manner of their composition, and their intrinsic defects. He did not publish them in any systematic order, but printed one after another, as it was written, or as extraneous circumstances might induce. Nor did he leave his system complete in any one treatise. His mind discursive, his imagination easily fired, he seized subject after subject and discussed each in a separate treatise, all with more or less reference to a general plan, but not embodied in any consecutive and harmonious development. The growth of his ideas, the changes of his views, as his life advanced, are manifest in the want of connection, as well as in the connection, of these various fragments. Dr. Rawley, his chaplain, says,—and it is a marvellous illustration of Bacon's diligence and desire for perfection,—"I myself have seen, at the least, twelve copies of the 'Instauration,' revised year by year, one after another, and every year altered and amended in the frame thereof."
Such, then, being the state of Bacon's works at his death, much was left to the judgment of his editors, and, unfortunately, the labor of editing his books has, up to the present time, fallen into hands wanting in competence and discretion. It has consequently been a task of special difficulty to get from the ill-arranged mass of Bacon's writings a satisfactory view of the essential elements of his philosophy and a just knowledge of his final opinions.
But the reproach of non-fulfilment of the trust committed to them will rest upon "the next ages" no longer; for the edition which is now in course of publication amply redeems the faults of those that have preceded it, and is such a one as Bacon himself might have approved. In the second book of the "Advancement of Learning," in recounting "the works or acts of merit toward learning," he includes among them "new editions of authors, with more correct impressions, more faithful translations, more profitable glosses, more diligent annotations, and the like." In each of these respects the edition before us deserves the highest praise. The editors have engaged in their task as in a labor of love. It is the result of many years of study, and it exhibits the fruit of unwearied care, great learning, and excellent judgment. So far as it has advanced, it does the highest honor to English scholarship, and takes its place as one of the most remarkable editions in existence of any author whose works stand in need of editorial care. The plan upon which it is arranged is as follows. Bacon's works are divided into three broad classes:—first, the Philosophical; secondly, the Professional; thirdly, the Literary and Occasional. Each of these classes was undertaken by a separate editor. Mr. Robert Leslie Ellis engaged upon the Philosophical Works, and had advanced far in his task when he was suddenly compelled to relinquish it some years since by illness which completely disabled him for labor. What he had already accomplished is so well done as to excite sincere regret that he was unable to carry his work forward. But this regret is diminished by the ability with which Mr. James Spedding, who had taken charge of the Literary and Occasional Works, has supplied Mr. Ellis's place in the completion of the editing of the Philosophical. The burden of the edition has fallen upon his shoulders, and the chief credit for its excellence is due to him. Up to the present time, the publication of the Philosophical Works is complete in five volumes, and the first volume of the Literary Works has just appeared. The separate treatises contained in the completed portion are distributed into three parts,—"whereby," says Mr. Spedding, "all those writings which were either published or intended for publication by Bacon himself as parts of the Great Instauration are (for the first time, I believe) exhibited separately, and distinguished as well from the independent and collateral pieces which did not form part of the main scheme, as from those which, though originally designed for it, were afterwards superseded and abandoned." Each piece is accompanied with a preface, both critical and historical, and with notes. It is in these prefaces that a great part of the value of the new edition consists; for they are in themselves treatises of elucidation and illustration of Bacon's opinions, and of investigation concerning the changes they underwent from time to time. They are written with great clearness and ability, and, taken together, present such a view of Bacon's philosophy as is to be found nowhere else, and amply answers the requirements of students, however exacting.
Far too much credit has been attributed to Bacon, in popular estimation, as the author of a system upon which the modern progress of science is based.[A] Whatever his system may have been, it is certain that it has had little direct influence upon the advance of knowledge. But, perhaps, too little credit has been given to Bacon as a man whose breadth and power of thought and amplitude of soul enabled a spirit that has at once stimulated its progress and elevated its disciples. That Bacon believed himself to have invented a system wholly new admits of no doubt; but it is doubtful whether he ever definitely arranged this system in his own mind. And it is a curious and interesting fact, and one illustrative, at least, of the imperfection of Bacon's exposition of his own method, that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Spedding, the two most conscientious investigators of Bacon's thought, should have arrived at different conclusions in regard to the distinctive peculiarities of the Baconian philosophy. Mr. Spedding, in his very interesting preface to the "Parasceve," suggests, since his own and Mr. Ellis's conclusions, though different, do not appear irreconcilable, "whether there be not room for a third solution, more complete than either, as including both." Both he and Mr. Ellis set out from the position, that "the philosophy which Bacon meant to announce was in some way essentially different, not only from any that had been before, but from any that has been since,"—a position very much opposed to the popular opinion. "The triumph of his [Bacon's] principles of scientific investigation," said, not long since, a writer in the "Quarterly Review," whose words may be taken as representative of the common ideas on the matter, "has made it unnecessary to revert to the reasoning by which they were established."[B] But the truth seems to be, that the merits of Bacon belong, as Mr. Ellis well says, "to the spirit rather than to the positive precepts of his philosophy." Nor does it appear that Bacon himself, although he indulged the highest hopes and felt the securest confidence in the results of his perfected system, supposed that he had given to it that perfection which was required. In the "De Augmentis Scientiarum," published in 1623, two years and a half before his death, he says: "I am preparing and laboring with all my might to make the mind of man, by help of art, a match for the nature of things, (ut mens per artem fiat rebus par,) to discover an art of Indication and Direction, whereby all other arts, with their axioms and works, may be detected and brought to light. For I have, with good reason, set this down as wanting." (Lib. v. c. 2.) Bacon regarded his method, not only as one wholly new, but also of universal application, and leading to absolute certainty. Doubt was to be excluded from its results. By its means, all the knowledge of which men were capable was to be attained surely and in a comparatively brief space of time. Such a conviction, extravagant as it may seem, is expressed in many passages. In the Preface to his "Parasceve," published in 1620, in the same volume with the "Novum Organum," he says, that he is about to describe a Natural and Experimental History, which, if it be once provided, (and he assumes, that, "etiam vivis nobis," it may be provided,) "paucorum annorum opus futuram esse inquitionem naturae et scientiarum omnium." Again, in the Protemium of the "Novum Organum": "There was but one course left, to commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations." And in the Dedication to the same work, he says, with characteristic confidence, "Equidem Organum praebui,"—"I have provided the Instrument."
[Footnote A: The tendency of scientific thought had been, for a considerable period before the time of Bacon, turned in the direction which he, perhaps, did more than any other single investigator to follow out and confirm. Leonardo da Vinci, the completest and most comprehensive genius of Modern Italy, had anticipated, by more than a century, several of the prominent features of the Baconian system. Too little of Leonardo's scientific writings has been published to furnish material for a satisfactory determination of their importance in promoting the advance of knowledge,—but the coincidence of thought, in some passages of his writings, with that in some of Bacon's weighty sentences, is remarkable. "I shall treat of this subject," he says, in a passage published by Venturi, "but I shall first set forth certain experiments; it being my principle to cite experience first, and then to demonstrate why bodies are constrained to act in such or such a manner. This is the method to be observed in investigating phenomena of Nature. It is true that Nature begins with the reason and ends with experience; but no matter; the opposite way is to be taken. We must, as I have said, begin with experience, and by means of this discover the reason."
Compare with this the two following passages from the "Novum Organum,"—the first being taken from the Ninety-ninth Axiom of the First Book. "Then only will there be good ground of hope for the further advance of knowledge, when there shall be received and gathered together into natural history a variety of experiments, which are of no use in themselves, but to discover causes and axioms."—The next passage is the Twenty-sixth Axiom of the same Book;—"The conclusions of human reason, as ordinarily applied in matter of nature, I call, for the sake of distinction, Anticipations of Nature (as a thing rash or premature). That reason which is elicited from facts by a just and methodical process I call Interpretation of Nature."
The first and famous axiom of the "Novum Organum" contains the phrase which Bacon constantly repeats,—"man being the interpreter of Nature." Leonardo uses the same expression,—"li omini inventori e interpreti tra la natura e gli omini." In another admirable passage of rebuke of the boastful and empty followers of old teachers, Leonardo says: "Though I might not cite authors as well as they, I shall cite a much greater and worthier thing, in citing experience, the teacher of their teachers" (Maestra di loro maestri). "And as for the overmuch credit," says Bacon, "that hath been given unto authors in sciences, in making them dictators that their words should stand, and not counsellors to give advice, the damage is infinite that sciences have received thereby."