FROM THE END OF the eighth century, when Alcuin of York was summoned to the court of Charles the Great, down to the middle of the fourteenth century, there was an almost constant succession of scholars of British birth among the writers who contributed to the development of philosophy in Europe. The most important names in the succession are John Scotus Erigena, John of Salisbury, Alexander of Hales, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Thomas Bradwardine. They wrote in Latin; and with the Latin language went community of culture, of topics, and of audience. All these they shared with an international commonwealth of scholars. National characteristics are never so strongly marked in science and philosophy as in other branches of literature, and their influence takes longer in making itself felt. The British birth or residence of a mediæval philosopher is of little more than biographical interest; and the attempt to trace its influence on the ideas or style of his work is apt to be conjectural and arbitrary. His work belongs to a tradition only slightly affected by the differences between nation and nation; it is a part of the history of philosophy, without being distinctively British. In this place, accordingly, it must suffice to characterize in general terms the movement of which the British schoolmen formed part, and some of the directions in which their ideas exercised an influence on later science and speculation.
The philosophy of the Middle Ages was, above all things, an attempt at the systematization of knowledge. The instrument for this synthesis was found in the logical conceptions and method of Aristotle. Its material consisted of the existing records of ancient philosophy and science, what was learned from contemporary experience, and the teachings of the church. In the heterogeneous mass of material thus brought together, a pre-eminent position was assigned to religious doctrine. The claims of theology were based upon revelation, interpreted by ecclesiastical authority. Philosophy, on the other hand, belonged to the province of reason, as distinct from that of faith; but it was essential that its results should be in harmony with theological doctrine. In this way it came to be regarded as ancillary to theology, and this feature became characteristic of the scholastic method and a frequent ground of objection to it in its decline. Connected with it was another and a more favorable feature. In accepting and interpreting theological doctrine the thought of the period recognized the independent value of the facts of the spiritual life. What the Scriptures and the fathers taught was confirmed by inner experience. In the laborious erudition and dialectical subtleties of the schoolmen there is seldom wanting a strain of this deeper thought, which attains its full development in mediæval mysticism. Thus, in the words of a recent historian, “it dawned upon men that the spiritual world is just as much a reality as the material world, and that in the former is man’s true home. The way was prepared for a more thorough investigation of spirit and matter than was possible to antiquity. Above all things, however, a sphere of experience was won for human life which was, in the strictest sense, its own property, into which no external powers could penetrate.”
To Erigena may be traced both mediæval mysticism and some anticipations of the scholastic method. He seems to have been born in Ireland about 810, and to have proceeded to France some thirty years later. Charles the Bald appointed him to the schola palatina at Paris. He appears to have had no further connection with Ireland or with England, and to have died in France about 877. It was probably owing to the protection of the king that he escaped the graver results which usually followed a suspicion of heresy. His works were officially condemned by papal authority in 1050 and 1225. Erigena was the predecessor of scholasticism but not himself one of the schoolmen. His anticipation of them consists not only in his dialectical method, but also in his recognition of the authority of the Bible and of the fathers of the church as final. But this recognition is guarded by the assertion that it is impossible for true authority and true reason really to conflict; and he deals quite freely with the letter of a doctrine, while he interprets its spirit in his own way. On the development of mystical thought he exercised an even greater influence. The fundamental conceptions and final outcome of his great work, De divisione naturœ, are essentially mystical in tone; and, by his translation of the pseudo-Dionysian writings, he made accessible the storehouse from which mediæval mystics derived many of their ideas. These writings are first heard of distinctly in the early part of the sixth century; even in that uncritical age they were not received without question; but they soon gained general acceptance as the genuine work of Dionysius the Areopagite who “clave unto” St. Paul after the address on Mars’ hill, and who was supposed to have become bishop of Athens. The work attributed to him contains an interpretation of Christian doctrine by means of Neoplatonic ideas. It exercised a strong influence upon Erigena himself and upon subsequent mediæval thought; and this influence was powerfully reinforced long afterwards by the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists at the time of the revival of learning.
Erigena’s work opens with a division of the whole of reality into four classes — that which creates and is not created, that which both is created and creates, that which is created but does not create, and that which neither creates nor is created. The last class is not mere non-existence. In general, it may be said to signify the potential as distinguished from the actual; in ultimate analysis, it is the goal or end towards which all things strive that in it they may find rest. It is therefore God as final cause, just as the first class in the division — the uncreated creator — is God as efficient cause. God is thus at once the beginning and end of all things, from which they proceed and to which they return. From the uncreated creator proceed the prototypes or ideas which contain the immutable reasons or grounds of all that is to be made. The world of ideas is created and yet eternal, and from it follows the creation of individual things. Their primordial causes are contained in the divine Logos (or Son of God), and from these, by the power of the divine Love (or Holy Spirit), is produced the realm of created things that cannot themselves create. God created the world out of nothing, that is to say, out of his ineffable divine nature, which is incomprehensible to men and angels. And the process is eternal: in God vision does not precede operation. Nor can anything subsist outside God: “the creature subsists in God, and God is created in the creature in a wonderful and ineffable manner, manifesting himself, the invisible making himself visible, and the incomprehensible comprehensible, and the hidden plain, and the unknown known.” Thus, while God, as creator and as final cause, transcends all things, he is also in all things. He is their beginning, middle, and end. And his essence is incomprehensible; nay, “God himself knows not what he is, for he is not a ‘what.’” Hence, all expressions used of God are symbolical only. Strictly speaking, we cannot even ascribe essence to him: he is super essential; nor goodness: he is beyond good (ὑπεράγαθος).
Erigena was more influenced by Plato than by Aristotle. His acquaintance with the latter’s works was restricted to certain of the logical treatises. The greater part of the Aristotelian writings became known to the schoolmen at a later date and mainly by means of Latin translations of Arabic translations of a Syriac version. The new Aristotelian influence began to make itself distinctly felt about three centuries after Erigena’s time. Alexander of Hales is said to have been the first schoolman who knew the whole philosophy of Aristotle and used it in the service of Christian theology. The metaphysical and physical writings of Aristotle were at first viewed with suspicion by the church, but afterwards definitely adopted, and his authority in philosophy became an article of scholastic orthodoxy. The great systems of the thirteenth century — especially the most lasting monument of scholastic thought, the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas — are founded on his teaching
But uniformity of opinion was not maintained completely or for long, and three English schoolmen are to be reckoned among the most (if not as the most) important opponents of St. Thomas. These are Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.
Roger Bacon, who was born about 1214 and died in 1294, was the earliest in time of the three named, and also the greatest and the most unfortunate. He lived and wrote under the shadow of an uncongenial system then at the height of its power. He suffered persecution and long imprisonments; his popular fame was that of an alchemist and a wizard; his works were allowed to lie unprinted for centuries; and only later scholars have been able to appreciate his significance. His learning seems to have been unique; he read Aristotle in Greek, and expressed unmeasured contempt for the Latin translations then in vogue; he was acquainted with the writings of the Arabian men of science, whose views were far in advance of all other contemporary knowledge. He does not appear himself to have made the original scientific discoveries with which he used to be credited, but he had thoroughly mastered the best of the science and philosophy of his day. There is, of course, much in his writings that may be called scholasticism, but his views on the method of science are markedly modern. His doctrine of method has been compared with that of his more famous namesake Francis Bacon. He was as decided as the latter was in rejecting all authority in matters of science; like him, he took a comprehensive view of knowledge and attempted a classification of the sciences; like him, also, he regarded natural philosophy as the chief of the sciences. The differences between the two are equally remarkable and serve to bring out the merits of the older philosopher. He was a mathematician; and, indeed, he looked upon mathematical proof as the sole type of demonstration. Further, he saw the importance in scientific method of two steps that were inadequately recognized by Francis Bacon — the deductive application of elementary laws to particular cases, followed by the experimental verification of the results. “Roger Bacon,” it has been said, “has come very near, nearer certainly than any preceding and than any succeeding writer until quite recent times, to a satisfactory theory of scientific method.”
The work of Duns Scotus (1265?-1308?) disturbed the harmony of faith and reason which had been asserted by St. Thomas, and which was of the essence of orthodox scholasticism. And “Scotism” became the rival of “Thomism” in the schools. Scotus was not himself heretical in religious belief, nor did he assert an antagonism between faith and reason; but he was critical of all intellectual arguments in the domain of theology. The leading school had not attempted a justification by reason of such specifically Christian doctrines as those of the Trinity or the Incarnation (as Erigena, for instance, had done). These were accepted as mysteries of the faith, known by revelation only. But certain doctrines — such as the being of God, the immortality of the soul, and the creation of the world out of nothing — were held to admit of rational proof, and thus to belong to “natural theology.” The arguments for the latter doctrines are subjected to criticism by Scotus. He denied the validity of natural theology — except in so far as he recognized that a certain vision of God may be reached by reason, although it needs to be reinforced by revelation. In restricting the power of intellect, Scotus exalted the significance of will. Faith is a voluntary submission to authority, and its objective ground is the unconditional will of God.
At the hands of Ockham (d. 1349?), who was a pupil of Duns Scotus, the separation between theology and philosophy, faith and reason, was made complete. He admitted that there are probable arguments for the existence of God, but maintained the general thesis that whatever transcends experience belongs to faith. In this way, he broke with Scotism as well as with Thomism on a fundamental question. He denied the real existence of ideas or universals and reverted to the doctrine known as nominalism, of which he became the greatest exponent. Entities are not to be postulated without necessity shown. The universal exists only as a conception in the individual mind: though it signifies, without change of meaning, any one of a number of things. The only reality is the individual, and all knowledge is derived from experience. Ockham is equally remarkable for his political writings, in which he defended the independent power of the temporal sovereign against the claims of the pope. His philosophical doctrines had many followers and opponents: but he is the last of the great scholastics, for his criticisms struck at the root of the scholastic presuppositions.
For more than two centuries after Ockham’s death, only one writer of importance can be reckoned among English philosophers. That writer was John Wyclif (d. 1384), in whose case a period of philosophical authorship — on scholastic lines — preceded his theological and religious activity.
After him comes a blank of long duration. The leaders of the Renaissance, both in philosophy and in science, belonged to the continent; and, although their ideas affected English scholarship and English literature, philosophical writings were slow to follow. And the theological controversies of the Reformation led to no new enquiry into the grounds of knowledge and belief. On the universities the teaching of Aristotle retained its hold, at least as regards logic, even after the introduction of the new “humanistic” studies.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century Aristotelianism experienced an academic revival, though its supporters, in all cases, were suspected of papistical leanings. John Case of St. John’s College, Oxford (B.A. 1568), gave up his fellowship on this ground (it is said), married, and was allowed by the university to give lectures on logic and philosophy in his house. In 1589 he took the M.D. degree and, in the same year, became a canon of Salisbury. He died in 1600. Between 1584 and 1599 he published seven books — text-books of Aristotelianism — dealing with logic, ethics, politics, and economics. His Speculum moralium questionum in universam ethicen Aristotelis (1585) was the first book printed at Oxford at the new press presented by the Earl of Leicester, chancellor of the university. John Sanderson, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A. 1558), was appointed logic reader in the university in 1562, but, in the same year, was expelled from his fellowship for suspicious doctrine. He became a student at Douay in 1570, was ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church, and was appointed divinity professor in the English college at Rheims. He died in 1602. The only work of his that is known is Institutionum Dialecticarum libri quatuor, printed at Antwerp in 1589 and at Oxford in 1594.
About the year 1580 a vigorous controversy regarding the merits of the old logic and the new was carried on between two fellows of Cambridge colleges, Everard Digby and William Temple. They were both younger in academic standing than Sanderson or Case, but they published earlier. Digby took his B.A. degree in the beginning of 1571, and became fellow of St. John’s early in 1573, shortly before Francis Bacon entered Trinity College as an undergraduate. He began to give public lectures on logic soon after this date. It is possible — we have no evidence on the point — that Bacon attended these lectures. If he did, they may have been the means of arousing his interest in the question of method, and they may also, at the same time, have awakened the spirit of criticism in him and led to that discontent with the philosophy of Aristotle which, according to his own account, he first acquired at Cambridge.
Digby’s career was chequered. He was suspected of “corrupt religion,” and he made enemies in his own society by his contempt for the authorities. In the end of December, 1587, on the nominal ground of an irregularity in his payments for commons, he was deprived of his fellowship by Whitaker, master of the college and a stern puritan. But Digby seems to have had friends in high place. He appealed to Burghley the chancellor and to Archbishop Whitgift. By their order a commission was appointed to enquire into the grounds of his dismissal and as a result, Digby was restored 28 May, 1588. But, by the end of the same year he seems to have been got rid of — how, we do not know. Probably, the real ground of objection to him — his lukewarm protestantism — made it prudent for him to leave the university. Digby was famous in his day for his eloquence as a lecturer, his skill in the disputations of the schools, and his learning. His learning, however, is much less than appears from the mere array of authorities which he cites. These are often taken from Reuchlin De arte cabbalistica (1517), the fictitious personages of this work being sometimes referred to as actual authors. Digby wrote in the true scholastic spirit; for him Aristotle’s doctrines were authoritative, and to disagree with them was heresy. At the same time, his own Aristotelianism was colored by a mystical theology for which he was largely indebted to Reuchlin. Digby chief work, Theoria analytica, viam ad monarchiam scientiarum demonstrans, was published in 1579. This was followed next year by two books — a criticism of Ramus entitled De duplici methodo, and a reply to Temple’s defense of the Ramist method. He was also the author of a small treatise De arte natandi (1587), and of an English Dissuasive from taking away the livings and goods of the Church (1589).
William Temple passed from Eton to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1573; in due course he became a fellow of the latter society, and was soon engaged in teaching logic. From about 1582 till about 1585 he was master of Lincoln grammar school. He then became secretary to Sir Philip Sidney (to whom his edition of the Dialectica of Ramus had been dedicated). After the latter’s death he occupied various secretarial posts, and was in the service of the Earl of Essex when he was obliged by the favorite’s fall to leave England. He does not seem to have returned till after the accession of King James. In 1609 he was made provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and, a few months later, master of chancery in Ireland. He was knighted in 1622, and died in January, 1627.
Temple’s important philosophical writings belong to the early part of his career. He was a pupil of Digby at Cambridge, and wrote in terms of warm appreciation of his master’s abilities and fame and of the new life that he had put into philosophical study in England. But he had himself found a more excellent way of reasoning in the logical method of Ramus, then coming to be known in this country. When scarcely twenty years of age, Ramus had startled the university of Paris by his strenuous opposition to the doctrines of Aristotle; he had allied himself to the Calvinists; and he ended his life as a victim of St. Bartholomew’s eve. The protestant schools, accordingly, tended to favor his system, in which logic, as the art of discourse, was assimilated to rhetoric and given a practical character. Ascham indeed, in a letter of 1552 and again in his Scholemaster (1570), expressed his disapproval of it. But, as early as 1573, we hear of its being defended in Cambridge. And in 1574, when Andrew Melville returned from Geneva and was appointed principal of the University of Glasgow, he “set him wholly to teach things not heard of in this country before,” and the Dialectica of Ramus took the place of Aristotle Organon or the scholastic manual elsewhere current in the universities of Great Britain. By his published works Temple became celebrated on the continent as well as at home as an expositor and defender of Ramist doctrine; and, doubtless, it is to his activity that Cambridge acquired a reputation in the early part of the seventeenth century as the leading school of Ramist philosophy. Temple began authorship in 1580, under the pseudonym of Franciscus Mildapettus Navarrenus, with an Admonitio to Digby in defense of the single method of Ramus. Other controversial writings on the same text, against Digby and Piscator of Strasbourg, followed in 1581 and 1582. In 1584 he published an annotated edition of Ramus Dialectica, and in the same year he issued, with a preface by himself, a disputation against Aristotle’s doctrine concerning the generation of simple and complex bodies, written by James Martin of Dunkeld, then a professor at Turin. These two books must have been among the first published by the university press, after the restoration of its license by Burghley, the chancellor, in this year.
In clearness of thought and argumentative skill Temple was far superior to Digby. On the more special point in dispute between them — whether the method of knowledge is twofold, from particulars to universals and from universals to particulars, or whether there is only one method of reasoning, that from universals — the truth was not entirely on Temple’s side. Nor had his method anything in common with the induction used in the physical sciences. But, in spite of its theoretical weakness, the new logic he recommended had the advantage of clearness and practicality, and was free from the complicated subtleties of the traditional systems. That Bacon was acquainted with the works of Digby and Temple is highly probable, though it cannot be conclusively established. Their influence upon him, however, must have consisted mainly in stimulating his interest in the question of method: they did not anticipate his theory of induction.
While these questions occupied the schools, William Gilbert, fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge (1561), president of the Royal College of Physicians (1600), was engaged in the laborious and systematic pursuit of experiments on magnetism which resulted in the publication of the first great English work of physical science, De Magnete, magneticisque corporibus (1600). Gilbert expressed himself as decidedly as did Bacon afterwards on the futility of expecting to arrive at knowledge of nature by mere speculation or by a few vague experiments. He had indeed no theory of induction; but he was conscious that he was introducing a “new style of philosophizing.” His work contains a series of carefully graduated experiments, each one of which is devised so as to answer a particular question, while the simpler and more obvious facts were set forth first, and their investigation led by orderly stages to that of the more complex and subtle. It is unfortunate that Bacon was so little appreciative of Gilbert’s book, as a careful analysis of the method actually employed in it might have guarded him from some errors. Gilbert has been called “the first real physicist and the first trustworthy methodical experimenter.” He was also the founder of the theory of magnetism and electricity; and he gave the latter its name, vis electrica. He explained the inclination of the magnetic needle by his conception of the earth as a magnet with two poles; he defended the Copernican theory; and, in his discussion of the attraction of bodies, there is a suggestion of the doctrine of universal gravitation. He had also reached a correct view of the atmosphere as extending only a few miles from the surface of the earth, with nothing but empty space beyond.
On an altogether different plane from Gilbert were two younger contemporaries of Bacon. Robert Fludd, a graduate of Oxford, was a man of fame in his day. He followed Paracelsus, defended the Rosicrucians and attacked Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, and Galileo. His works are distinguished by fantastic speculation rather than by scientific method. Nathanael Carpenter, a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, attacked the physical theory of Aristotle in his Philosophia libera (1621). The works of William Harvey belong to the period following Bacon’s death, although he had announced his discovery of the circulation of the blood in 1616.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAY be said to have become for the first time the vehicle of philosophical literature by the publication of Bacon’s Advancement of Learning in 1605. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, which preceded it by eleven years, belongs to theology rather than to philosophy; the nature of William Baldwin’s Treatise of Moral Phylosophie, containing the Sayings of the Wyse (1547) is sufficiently indicated by its title; and the little-known treatise of Sir Richard Barckley, entitled A Discourse of the felicitie of man: or his Summum bonum (1598), consists mainly of amusing or improving anecdotes, and contains nothing of the nature of a moral philosophy. In the sixteenth century, however, a beginning had been made at writing works on logic in English. In 1552, Thomas Wilson published The Rule of Reason, conteining the arte of logique. The innovation was not without danger at the time, if it be true that his publication on this subject in a vulgar tongue led to the author’s imprisonment by the Inquisition at Rome. His example was followed in safer circumstances by Ralph Lever, who, in his Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft, teaching a perfect way to argue and dispute (1573), not only wrote in English, but used words of English derivation in place of the traditional terminology — foreset and backset for “subject” and “predicate,” inholder and inbeer for “substance” and “accident,” say what for “definition” and so on. This attempt was never taken seriously; and a considerable time had to elapse before English became the usual language for books on logic. In the seventeenth century, as well as in the sixteenth, the demands of the universities made the use of Latin almost essential for the purpose.
Bacon’s predecessors, whether in science or in philosophy, used the common language of learned men. He was the first to write an important treatise on science or philosophy in English; and even he had no faith in the future of the English language. In the Advancement he had a special purpose in view: he wished to get support and co-operation in carrying out his plans; and he regarded the book as only preparatory to a larger scheme. The works intended to form part of his great design for the renewal of the sciences were written in Latin. But the traditional commonwealth of thought was weakened by the forces which issued in the Renaissance; and, among these forces, the increased consciousness of nationality led gradually to greater differentiation in national types of culture, and to the use of the national language even for subjects which appealed chiefly or only to the community of learned men. However much he may have preferred the Latin tongue as the vehicle of his philosophy, Bacon’s own action made him a leader of this movement; and it so happened that the type of thought which he expounded had affinities with the practical and positive achievements of the English mind. In this way Bacon has come to be regarded, not altogether correctly, not only as the beginner of English philosophy, but also as representative of the special characteristics of the English philosophical genius.
Francis Bacon was the younger of the two sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal, by his second wife Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and sister-in-law of Lord Burghley. He was born at York House, London, on 22 January, 1561. In April, 1573, he was sent, along with his brother Anthony, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained (except for an absence of about six months when the plague raged there) till Christmas, 1575. Of his studies in Cambridge we know little or nothing; and it would be easy to lay too great stress on the statement long afterwards made to Rawley, his first biographer, that, before he left the university, he “fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way.” In 1576 he was sent by his father to France with Sir Amyas Paulet, the ambassador, and in his suite he remained until recalled home by Sir Nicholas’s sudden death in February, 1579. This event had an unfortunate effect upon his career. A sum of money which his father had set apart to purchase an estate for him had not been invested, and he inherited a fifth part of it only. He had therefore to look to the bar for an income and to the grudging favor of the Cecils for promotion. He was called to the bar in 1582, and entered parliament in 1584: sitting in each successive House of Commons until he became lord keeper. But office was long in coming to him. The queen had been affronted by an early speech of his in parliament in which he had criticized the proposals of the court; and the Cecils always proved more kin than kind. The objects which he sought were never unworthy nor beyond his merits; but he sought them in ways not always dignified. He pleaded his cause in many letters to Burghley and Salisbury and Buckingham; and the style of his supplications can hardly be accounted for altogether by the epistolary manners of the period. In 1589 Burghley got him the reversion of an office in the Star Chamber, worth about £1600 a year; but to this he did not succeed till 1608. From about 1597 he had come to be employed regularly as one of the queen’s learned counsel. In 1604 he was made one of his ordinary counsel by King James, with a salary of £40; and Bacon reckoned this as his first preferment. He was made solicitor-general in 1607, attorney-general in 1613, privy councilor in 1616, lord keeper in 1617, lord chancellor in 1618. He was knighted in 1603, but, to his chagrin, along with a crowd of three hundred others; he was created Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St. Albans in 1621. A few weeks later charges of having received bribes from suitors in his court were brought against him in the newly-summoned House of Commons; these were remitted to the House of Lords for trial; he was convicted on his own confession, and sentenced to deprivation of all his offices, to imprisonment in the tower during the king’s pleasure, to a fine of £40,000, to exclusion from the verge of the court, and to incapacity from sitting in parliament. The imprisonment lasted a few days only; the fine was made over to trustees for Bacon’s benefit; the exclusion from the verge was soon removed; but, in spite of many entreaties, he was never allowed to sit in parliament again.
In the midst of the legal and political work which crowded these years, Bacon never lost sight of his larger ambitions. He published the first edition of his Essays in 1597, the second (enlarged) edition appearing in 1612 and the third (completed) edition in 1625. The Advancement of Learning was published in 1605, addressed to King James, De Sapientia Veterum in 1609, Novum Organum in 1620. After his disgrace he lived at Gorhambury, the paternal estate to which he had succeeded on the death of his brother Anthony in 1601, and there he devoted himself to writing. The History of Henry VII appeared in 1622, and De Augmentis Scientiarum in 1623; the New Atlantis was written in 1624; at his death he was at work on Sylva Sylvarum; and he left behind him many sketches and detached portions of his great but incomplete design. Bacon had been married in 1606 to Alice Barnham, the daughter of an alderman. He died on 9 April, 1626, from the effects of a chill caught by moving out of his carriage in order to try an experiment on the antiseptic properties of snow.
Bacon’s plan for the renewal of the sciences was never fully elaborated by himself, and it has never been deliberately and systematically followed by others. In his personal career, too, there are some events that still remain obscure. But material is not lacking for forming a judgment on his philosophy and on his life. We cannot expect to remove either from the range of controversy. But the life-long devotion of Spedding may be said with confidence to have made one thing clear. Pope’s famous epigram — “the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind” — and the brilliant elaboration of the same in Macaulay’s essay cannot be made to fit the facts. Bacon was not a monster; and his character and genius cannot be explained by being set in sharp antithesis. Life and philosophy are revelations of the same mind, and we must expect one to shed light on the other. It is on this account that it is necessary to attempt an estimate of Bacon’s character and to touch upon the disputed events in his career, although the questions cannot be discussed at length, and little more can be done than indicate results.
In a fragment written about 1603, and apparently intended as a preface to his great work, Bacon set forth the ambitions which guided his life; and there is no reason for doubting the substantial accuracy of his account. Believing (he begins) that he was born for the service of mankind, he set himself to consider for what service nature had fitted him best. He saw that the good effects wrought by practical statesmen “extend over narrow spaces and last but for short times; whereas the work of the Inventor, though a thing of less pomp and shew, is felt everywhere and lasts for ever.” And for this end he thought nature had destined him. “I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things (which is the chief point), and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with Truth.” His first object, therefore, was the knowledge that would extend and establish the empire of man over nature. But birth and education had introduced him to the service of the state, and “a man’s own country has some special claims upon him.” For these reasons he sought civil employment; and the service of the state may be said to have been his second object in life. Finally, he adds, “I was not without hope (the condition of Religion being at that time not very prosperous) that if I came to hold office in the state, I might get something done too for the good of men’s souls.” According to Bacon’s own account, therefore, the service of mankind to which he held himself born was to be carried out by devotion to three objects: the discovery of truth, the welfare of his country, and the reform of religion. And of these three objects the first always held the highest place in his thoughts. “I confess,” he wrote to Burghley about 1592, “that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be my province.”
This greatness of design was characteristic of the mind of the period as well as of Bacon personally. But it was accompanied by inadequate preparation in the methods and principles of the exact sciences as understood at the time, and often by an imperfect grasp of details. If the latter defect may be traced in his intellectual work, it is still more apparent in his practical activity. It is not fanciful to connect with this characteristic some of the actions for which he has been most censured. Throughout his career he was never free from financial difficulties; and, when he had obtained high preferment, he maintained a magnificent style of living without exercising any effective control over the expenditure of his household. When the charge of taking bribes was made against him he was much surprised, but he had no defense. It may be true, as he asserted, that he never allowed a present from a suitor to influence his decision; nor do any of his judgments appear to have been reversed on this ground. It may be true also that Bacon only followed the custom of his time: though, on this point, it is difficult to get evidence. But he himself saw the impropriety of a judge being “twice paid” — to quote the mild term of censure use in his New Atlantis. And he took no care to guard against the impropriety in his own conduct. In the main he was probably a just, as well as an efficient, judge. But he was too tenacious of his office as he had been too eager to obtain it; and it is hardly possible to resist the evidence for the conclusion that, on one occasion at least, he allowed the court favorite Buckingham to influence his decision. In another matter — that of the trial of the Earl of Essex — Bacon’s conduct has been blamed in a manner too unqualified. The benefits which he had received at the hands of Essex would not have been a sufficient reason for his standing aside when the need arose for his taking part in the prosecution. The rebellion of Essex had been a real danger to the state and not merely an explosion of bad temper. It was essential that the prosecution should not fail through the case being badly presented; and Bacon’s intervention was not merely excusable: it may be argued that it was his duty to safeguard the interests of the state, and to subordinate to them the claims of private friendship and gratitude, in spite of the tragedy of the personal situation. At the same time, it must be admitted that the record of the trial does not suggest that he felt the tragedy. Judging from the manner in which he pressed home the charge, the personal factor seems to have touched him but slightly. And this perhaps is characteristic. He was capable of high enthusiasm for ideas and for causes. His philosophical works are inspired by the former; and his writings on public affairs show a spirit of devotion to the common weal as well as political wisdom. But, on the side of personal sentiment, his nature seems to have been cold — not easily stirred to the love or hate which unite and divide mankind.
Bacon intended that his Great Instauration or Renewal of the Sciences should be set forth in six parts. These he enumerated as follows: (1) The Division of the Sciences; (2) The New Organon, or Directions concerning the Interpretation of Nature; (3) The Phenomena of the Universe, or a Natural and Experimental History for the foundation of Philosophy; (4) The Ladder of the Intellect; (5) The Forerunners, or Anticipations of the New Philosophy; (6) The New Philosophy, or Active Science. Of these parts, the last was to be the work of future ages; for the fourth and fifth only prefaces were written; the first three are represented by considerable works, although in none of them is the original design carried out with completeness. Latin was to be the language of them all. The Advancement of Learning, which, in great part, covers the ground of the first division, was not written as part of the plan; but De Augmentis, which takes its place in the scheme, is, so far, little more than an extended Latin translation of the Advancement. Bacon last work, Sylva Sylvarum, which belongs to the third part, was written in English.
Bacon, as he said himself, took all knowledge as his province; his concern was not so much with particular branches of science as with principles, method, and system. For this purpose he sets out by reviewing the existing state of knowledge, dwelling on its defects and pointing out remedies for them. This is the burden of the first book of the Advancement and of De Augmentis. In the second book he proceeds to expound his division of the sciences. The principle with which he starts in his classification is psychological: “The parts of human learning have reference to the three parts of man’s understanding, which is the seat of learning: history to his memory, poesy to his imagination, and philosophy to his reason.” The subdivisions of these, however, are based on differences in the objects, not in the mental faculty employed. History is divided into natural and civil. To the latter of these, ecclesiastical and literary history are regarded as subordinate (although made coordinate in the Advancement). Poetry is held to be “nothing else but feigned history,” and is subdivided into narrative, representative, and allusive or parabolical. But it is with the last of the three main divisions of learning that Bacon is chiefly concerned.
“In Philosophy,” he says, “the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted upon himself. Out of which several enquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine philosophy, Natural philosophy, and Human philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character, of the power of God, the difference of nature, and the use of man.” But, as the three divisions all spring from a common root, and certain observations and axioms are common to all, the receptacle for these must constitute “one universal science, by the name of Philosophia Prima, Primitive or Summary Philosophy.” Among the three divisions of philosophy, Bacon’s most important thoughts concern natural philosophy. One of his fundamental ideas is expressed by its distinction into two parts — “the inquisition of causes, and the production of effects; Speculative, and Operative; Natural Science, and Natural Prudence.” More subtle is the distinction of natural science into physic and metaphysic. The latter term is not used in its traditional sense, nor is it synonymous with what Bacon calls summary philosophy, which deals with axioms common to several sciences. Both physic and metaphysic deal with natural objects: physic with their material and efficient causes, meta- physic with their formal and final causes. Thus, “Physic is situate in a middle term or distance between Natural History and Metaphysic. For Natural History describeth the variety of things; Physic, the causes, but variable and respective causes; and Metaphysic, the fixed and constant causes.” In elaborating this view, Bacon covers ground traversed again in the Novum Organum.
Both for its style and for the importance of the ideas which it conveys, the Novum Organum ranks as Bacon’s greatest work. To its composition he devoted the most minute care. Rawley tells us that he had seen no less than twelve drafts of it in Bacon’s own handwriting, rewritten from year to year. As it was at last published its stately diction is a fit vehicle for the prophetic message it contains. The aphorisms into which the matter is thrown add impressiveness to the leading ideas, without seriously interfering with the sequence of the argument. It is chiefly to it that we must go if we would understand the message and the influence of Bacon. And this understanding will be facilitated if we distinguish, as he himself never did, between certain leading ideas which he, more than anyone else, impressed upon the mind of succeeding ages, and his own more special conception of nature and of the true method for its investigation.
Of those leading and general ideas, two have been already indicated. One of these is the belief in the unity of science. His classification of the sciences had in view not only their differences but also their essential oneness. “The divisions of knowledge,” he says, “are like branches of a tree that meet in one stem (which stem grows for some distance entire and continuous, before it divides itself into arms and boughs).” They are to be accepted “rather for lines to mark or distinguish, than sections to divide and separate.”
The second of these leading ideas is the practical aim of knowledge. This is a constantly recurring thought, and is, in his own mind, the most fundamental; it is the first distinction which he draws between his own new logic and the old, and it was meant to characterize the new philosophy of which he claims to have made only the beginning. And he enforces it in memorable words: “The matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human race, and all power of operation. For man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature’s order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails.”
Bacon’s object was to establish or restore the empire of man over nature. This empire depends upon knowledge; but, in the mind of man, there are certain obstacles to knowledge which predispose it to ignorance and error. The doctrine of the tendencies to error inherent in the human mind is another of his fundamental thoughts. These tendencies to error he called idola mentis — images or phantoms by which the mind is misled. The name is taken from Plato and contrasted with the Platonic “idea”; and emphasis is laid on the difference between the idols of the human mind, which are abstractions that distort and misrepresent reality, and the ideas of the divine mind, which are “the creator’s own stamp upon reality, impressed and defined in matter by true and exquisite lines.” This doctrine had long occupied Bacon’s thought; it was stated in the Advancement, where, however, the last of the four classes of idols is wanting; and it was completely set forth for the first time in the Novum Organum.
In the latter work four classes of idols are distinguished: idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the market-place, and idols of the theatre. Under these graphic titles Bacon works out a doctrine which shows both originality and insight. The originality is conspicuous in what he says concerning the idols of the tribe. They are deceptive tendencies which are inherent in the mind of man as such and belong to the whole human race. The understanding, he says, is like a false mirror that distorts and discolors the nature of things. Thus, it supposes more order and regularity in the world than it finds, as when it assigns circular motion to the celestial bodies; it is more moved and excited by instances that agree with its preconceptions than by those that differ from them; it is unquiet, and cannot rest in a limit without seeking to press beyond it, or in an ultimate principle without asking for its cause; it “is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections”; it depends on the senses, and they are “dull, incompetent, and deceptive”; and it is “prone to abstractions and gives a substance and reality to things which are fleeting.” The idols of the cave belong not to the race but to the individual. They take their rise in his peculiar constitution, and are modified by education, habit, and accident. Thus some minds are apt to mark differences, others resemblances, and both tend to err, though in opposite ways; or again, devotion to a particular science or speculation may so color a man’s thoughts that everything is interpreted by its light. The idols of the market-place are those due to the use of language, and they are the most troublesome of all. “For men believe that their reason governs words; but it is also true that words react on the understanding; and this it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences sophistical and inactive.” Finally, the idols of the theatre are due to “philosophical systems and the perverted rules of demonstration.” In this connection Bacon classifies “false philosophies” as sophistical, empirical, and superstitious. In his amplification of this division, his adverse judgment upon Aristotle may be discounted; his want of appreciation of Gilbert is a more reasonable matter of regret; but, at bottom, his view is sound that it is an error either to “fashion the world out of categories” or to base a system on “the narrowness and darkness of a few experiments.”