(1) _Novum Organum_, Lib. 1. Aph. 73.
{441}the eminent philosophers of antiquity forces us to adopt the
opinion that their powers were systematically misdirected. For how else
could it be that such powers should effect so little for mankind? A
pedestrian may show as much muscular vigour on a treadmill as on the
highway road. But on the road his vigour will assuredly carry him
forward; and on the treadmill he will not advance an inch. The ancient
philosophy was a treadmill, not a path. It was made up of revolving
questions, of controversies which were always beginning again. It was
a contrivance for having much exertion and no progress. We must
acknowledge that more than once, while contemplating the doctrines of
the Academy and the Portico, even as they appear in the transparent
splendour of Cicero’s incomparable diction, we have been tempted to
mutter with the surly centurion in Persius, “Cur quis non prandeat hoc
est?” What is the highest good, whether pain be an evil, whether all
things be fated, whether we can be certain of any thing, whether we can
be certain that we are certain of nothing, whether a wise man can be
unhappy, whether all departures from right be equally reprehensible,
these, and other questions of the same sort, occupied the brains, the
tongues, and the pens of the ablest men in the civilised world during
several centuries. This sort of philosophy, it is evident, could not be
progressive. It might indeed sharpen and invigorate the minds of those
who devoted themselves to it; and so might the disputes of the orthodox
Lilliputians and the heretical Blefuscudians about the big ends and the
little ends of eggs. But such disputes could add nothing to the stock
of knowledge. The human mind accordingly, instead of marching, merely
marked time. It took as much trouble as would have sufficed to carry
it forward; {442}and yet remained on the same spot. There was no
accumulation of truth, no heritage of truth acquired by the labour of
one generation and bequeathed to another, to be again transmitted with
large additions to a third. Where this philosophy was in the time of
Cicero, there it continued to be in the time of Seneca, and there it
continued to be in the time of Favorinus. The same sects were still
battling with the same unsatisfactory arguments about the same
interminable questions. There had been no want of ingenuity, of zeal,
of industry. Every trace of intellectual cultivation was there, except
a harvest. There had been plenty of ploughing, harrowing, reaping,
threshing. But the garners contained only smut and stubble.
The ancient philosophers did not neglect natural science; but they
did not cultivate it for the purpose of increasing the power and
ameliorating the condition of man. The taint of barrenness had spread
from ethical to physical speculations. Seneca wrote largely on natural
philosophy, and magnified the importance of that study. But why? Not
because it tended to assuage suffering, to multiply the conveniences of
life, to extend the empire of man over the material world; but solely
because it tended to raise the mind above low cares, to separate it
from the body, to exercise its subtilty in the solution of very obscure
questions. (1) Thus natural philosophy was considered in the light
merely of a mental exercise. It was made subsidiary to the art of
disputation; and it consequently proved altogether barren of useful
discoveries.
There was one sect which, however absurd and pernicious some of its
doctrines may have been, ought,
(1) Seneca, _Nat. Quoest. proef_. Lib. 3.
{443}it should seem, to have merited an exception from the general
censure which Bacon has pronounced on the ancient schools of wisdom. The
Epicurean, who referred all happiness to bodily pleasure, and all
evil to bodily pain, might have been expected to exert himself for
the purpose of bettering his own physical condition and that of his
neighbours. But the thought seems never to have occurred to any member
of that school. Indeed, their notion, as reported by their great poet,
was, that no more improvements were to be expected in the arts which
conduce to the comfort of life.
“Ad victum quae flagicat usus
Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata.”
This contented despondency, this disposition to admire what has
been done, and to expect that nothing more will be done, is strongly
characteristic of all the schools which preceded the school of Fruit and
Progress. Widely as the Epicurean and the Stoic differed on most points,
they seem to have quite agreed in their contempt for pursuits so vulgar
as to be useful. The philosophy of both was a garrulous, declaiming,
canting, wrangling philosophy. Century after century they continued to
repeat their hostile war-cries, Virtue and Pleasure; and in the end
it appeared that the Epicurean had added as little to the quantity of
pleasure as the Stoic to the quantity of virtue. It is on the pedestal
of Bacon, not on that of Epicurus, that those noble lines ought to be
inscribed:
“O tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen
Qui primus potuisti, illustrous commoda vitæ.”
In the fifth century Christianity had conquered Paganism, and Paganism
had infected Christianity. The Church was now victorious and corrupt.
The {444}rites of the Pantheon had passed into her worship, the
subtilties of the Academy into her creed. In an evil day, though with
great pomp and solemnity,--we quote the language of Bacon,--was the
ill-starred alliance stricken between the old philosophy and the new
faith. (1) Questions widely different from those which had employed
the ingenuity of Pyrrho and Carneades, but just as subtle, just as
interminable, and just as unprofitable, exercised the minds of the
lively and voluble Greeks. When learning began to revive in the West,
similar trifles occupied the sharp and vigorous intellects of the
Schoolmen. There was another sowing of the wind, and another reaping of
the whirlwind. The great work of improving the condition of the human
race was still considered as unworthy of a man of learning. Those
who undertook that task, if what they effected could be readily
comprehended, were despised as mechanics; if not, they were in danger of
being burned as conjurers.
There cannot be a stronger proof of the degree in which the human mind
had been misdirected than the history of the two greatest events which
took place du ring the middle ages. We speak of the invention of
Gunpowder and of the invention of Printing. The dates of both are
unknown. The authors of both are unknown. Nor was this because men were
too rude and ignorant to value intellectual superiority. The inventor of
gunpowder appears to have been contemporary with Petrarch and Boccaccio.
The inventor of printing was certainly contemporary with Nicholas
the Fifth, with Cosmo de’ Medici, and with a crowd of distinguished
scholars. But the human mind still retained that fatal bent which it had
received two
(1) _Cogitata et visa._
{445}thousand years earlier. George of Trebisond and Marsilio Ficino
would not easily have been brought to believe that the inventor of the
printing-press had done more for mankind than themselves, or than those
ancient writers of whom they were the enthusiastic votaries.
At length the time arrived when the barren philosophy which had, during
so many ages, employed the faculties of the ablest of men, was destined
to fall. It had worn many shapes. It had mingled itself with many
creeds. It had survived revolutions in which empires, religions,
languages, races, had perished. Driven from its ancient haunts, it had
taken sanctuary in that Church which it had persecuted, and had, like
the daring friends of the poet, placed its seat
“next the seat of God,
And with its darkness dared affront his light.”
Words, and more words, and nothing but words, had been all the fruit of
all the toil of all the most renowned sages of sixty generations. But
the days of this sterile exuberance were numbered.
Many causes predisposed the public mind to a change. The study of
a great variety of ancient writers, though it did not give a right
direction to philosophical research, did much towards destroying that
blind reverence for authority which had prevailed when Aristotle ruled
alone. The rise of the Florentine sect of Platonists, a sect to which
belonged some of the finest minds of the fifteenth century, was not
an unimportant event. The mere substitution of the Academic for the
Peripatetic philosophy would indeed have done little good. But any thing
was better than the old habit of unreasoning servility. It was
{446}something to have a choice of tyrants. “A spark of freedom,” as
Gibbon has justly remarked, “was produced by this collision of adverse
servitude.”
Other causes might be mentioned. But it is chiefly to the great
reformation of religion that we owe the great reformation of philosophy.
The alliance between the Schools and the Vatican had for ages been so
close that those who threw off the dominion of the Vatican could not
continue to recognise the authority of the Schools. Most of the chiefs
of the schism treated the Peripatetic philosophy with contempt, and
spoke of Aristotle as if Aristotle had been answerable for all the
dogmas of Thomas Aquinas. “Nullo apud Lutheranos philosophiam esse in
pretio,” was a reproach which the defenders of the Church of Rome loudly
repeated, and which many of the Protestant leaders considered as a
compliment. Scarcely any text was more frequently cited by the reformers
than that in which St. Paul cautions the Colossians not to let any man
spoil them by philosophy. Luther, almost at the outset of his career,
went so far as to declare that no man could be at once a proficient in
the school of Aristotle and in that of Christ. Zwingle, Bucer,
Peter Martyr, Calvin, held similar language. In some of the Scotch
universities, the Aristotelian system was discarded for that of Ramus.
Thus, before the birth of Bacon, the empire cf the scholastic philosophy
had been shaken to its foundations. There was in the intellectual world
an anarchy resembling that which in the political world often follows
the overthrow of an old and deeply rooted government. Antiquity,
prescription, the sound of great names, had ceased to awe mankind. The
dynasty which had reigned for ages was at an end; and the vacant throne
was left to be struggled for by pretenders. {447}The first effect of
this great revolution, was, as Bacon most justly observed, (1) to give
for a time an undue importance to the mere graces of style. The new
breed of scholars, the Aschams and Buchanans, nourished with the finest
compositions of the Augustan age, regarded with loathing the dry,
crabbed, and barbarous diction of respondents and opponents, They were
far less studious about the matter of their writing than about the
manner. They succeeded in reforming Latinity; but they never even
aspired to effect a reform in philosophy.
At this time Bacon appeared. It is altogether incorrect to say, as
has often been said, that he was the first man who rose up against the
Aristotelian philosophy when in the height of its power. The authority
of that philosophy had, as we have shown, received a fatal blow long
before he was born. Several speculators, among whom Ramus is the best
known, had recently attempted to form new sects. Bacon’s own expressions
about the state of public opinion in the time of Luther are clear
and strong: “Accedebat,” says he, “odium et contemptus, illis ipsis
temporibus ortus erga Scholasticos.” And again, “Scholasticorum doctrina
despectui prorsus haberi copit tanquam aspera et barbara.” (2) The
part which Bacon played in this great change was the part, not of
Robespierre, but of Bonaparte. The ancient order of things had been
subverted. Some bigots still cherished with devoted loyalty the
remembrance of the fallen monarchy and exerted themselves to effect
a restoration. But the majority had no such feeling. Freed, yet not
knowing how to use their freedom,
(1) _De Augments_, Lib. 1.
(2) Both these passages are in the first book of the De
Augmentis.
{448}they pursued no determinate course, and had found no leader capable
of conducting them.
That leader at length arose. The philosophy which he taught was
essentially new. It differed from that of the celebrated ancient
teachers, not merely in method, but also in object. Its object was the
good of mankind, in the sense in which the mass of mankind always have
understood and always will understand the word good. “Meditor,” said
Bacon, “instaurationem philosophise ejusmodi quæ nihil inanis ant
abstracti habeat, quæque vitæ liumanæ conditiones in melius provehat.”
(1)
The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of his
predecessors cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by comparing
his views on some important subjects with those of Plato. We select
Plato, because we conceive that he did more than any other person
towards giving to the minds of speculative men that bent which they
retained till they received from Bacon a new impulse in a diametrically
opposite direction.
It is curious to observe how differently these great men estimated the
value of every kind of knowledge. Take Arithmetic for example. Plato,
after speaking slightly of the convenience of being able to reckon
and compute in the ordinary transactions of life, passes to what he
considers as a far more important advantage. The study of the properties
of numbers, he tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of
pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his
disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to
buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shop-keepers
(1) _Redargutio Philosophiarum._
{449}or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to
withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible
and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.
(1)
Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge, only on
account of its uses with reference to that visible and tangible world
which Plato so much despised. He speaks with scorn of the mystical
arithmetic of the later Platonists, and laments the propensity of
mankind to employ, on mere matters of curiosity, powers the whole
exertion of which is required for purposes of solid advantage. He
advises arithmeticians to leave these trifles, and to employ themselves
in framing convenient expressions, which may be of use in physical
researches. (2)
The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study of arithmetic
led him to recommend also the study of mathematics. The vulgar crowd
of geometricians, he says, will not understand him. They have practice
always in view. They do not know that the real use of the science is
to lead men to the knowledge of abstract, essential, eternal truth. (3)
Indeed, if we are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this feeling so far
that he considered geometry as degraded by being applied to any
purpose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed machines of
extraordinary power on mathematical principles. (4) Plato remonstrated
with his friend, and declared that this was to degrade a noble
intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit only for carpenters and
wheelwrights. The office of geometry, he
(1) Plato’s _Republic,_ Book 7.
(2) _De Augmentis_, Lib. 3. Cap. 6.
(3) Plato’s _Republic_, Book 7.
(4) Plutarch, _Sympos_. viii. and _Life of Marcellus_. The
machines of Archytas are also mentioned by Aulus Gellius and
Diogenes Laertius
{450}said, was to discipline the mind, not to minister to the base
wants of the body. His interference was successful; and from that
time, according to Plutarch, the science of mechanics was considered as
unworthy of the attention of a philosopher.
Archimedes in a later age imitated and surpassed Archytas. But even
Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion that geometry was
degraded by being employed to produce any thing useful. It was with
difficulty that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice.
He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile
nations, and always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements, as
trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind
after intense application to the higher parts of his science.
The opinion of Bacon on this subject was diametrically opposed to that
of the ancient philosophers. He valued geometry chiefly, if not solely,
on account of those uses, which to Plato appeared so base. And it is
remarkable that the longer Bacon lived the stronger this feeling became.
When in 1605 he wrote the two books on the Advancement of Learning, he
dwelt on the advantages which mankind derived from mixed mathematics;
but he at the same time admitted that the beneficial effect produced by
mathematical study on the intellect, though a collateral advantage, was
“no less worthy than that which was principal and intended.” But it
is evident that his views underwent a change. When, near twenty years
later, he published the _De Augmentis_, which is the Treatise on the
Advancement of Learning, greatly expanded and carefully corrected, he
made important alterations in the part which related to mathematics.
{451}He condemned with severity the high pretensions of the
mathematicians, “delicias et fastum mathemati-corum.” Assuming the
well-being of the human race to be the end of knowledge, (1) he
pronounced that mathematical science could claim no higher rank than
that of an appendage or an auxiliary to other sciences. Mathematical
science, he says, is the handmaid of natural philosophy; she ought to
demean herself as such; and he declares that he cannot conceive by what
ill chance it has happened that she presumes to claim precedence over
her mistress. He predicts--a prediction which would have made Plato
shudder--that as more and more discoveries are made in physics, there
will be more and more branches of mixed mathematics. Of that collateral
advantage the value of which, twenty years before, he rated so highly,
he says not one word. This omission cannot have been the effect of mere
inadvertence. His own treatise was before him. From that treatise he
deliberately expunged whatever was favourable to the study of pure
mathematics, and inserted several keen reflections on the ardent
votaries of that study. This fact, in our opinion, admits of only one
explanation. Bacon’s love of those pursuits which directly tend to
improve the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits
merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, become
immoderate. He was afraid of using any expression which might have the
effect of inducing any man of talents to employ in speculations,
useful only to the mind of the speculator, a single hour which might be
employed in extending the empire of man over matter. (2) If Bacon erred
here, we
(1) Usui et commodis hominum consulirems.
(2) Compare the passage relating to mathematics in the
Second Book of the Advancement of Learning, with the _De
Augmeniis_, Lib. 3. Cap. 6.
{452}must acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite
error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, like those
Roman matrons who swallowed abortives in order to preserve their shapes,
takes pains to be barren for fear of being homely.
Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences which Plato
exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons for removed from common
habits of thinking. “Shall we set down astronomy,” says Socrates, “among
the subjects of study?” (1) “I think so,” answers his young friend
Glaucon: “to know something about the seasons, the months, and the
years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and
navigation.”
“It amuses me,” says Socrates, “to see how afraid you are, lest
the common herd of people should accuse you of recommending useless
studies.” He then proceeds, in that pure and magnificent diction which,
as Cicero said, Jupiter would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to explain
that the use of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life,
but to assist in raising the mind to the contemplation of things which
are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The knowledge of the
actual motions of the heavenly bodies Socrates considers as of little
value. The appearances which make the sky beautiful at night are, he
tells us, like the figures which a geometrician draws on the sand, mere
examples, mere helps to feeble minds. We must get beyond them; we must
neglect them; we must attain to an astronomy which is as independent of
the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the lines of an
ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very nearly, if not exactly, the
astronomy which Bacon
(1) Plato’s _Republic_, Book 7.
{453}compared to the ox of Prometheus, (1) a sleek, wellshaped hide,
stuffed with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat.
He complained that astronomy had, to its great injury, been separated
from natural philosophy, of which it was one of the noblest provinces,
and annexed to the domain of mathematics. The world stood in need, he
said, of a very different astronomy, of a living astronomy, (2) of
an astronomy which should set forth the nature, the motion, and the
influences of the heavenly bodies, as they really are. (3)
On the greatest and most useful of all human inventions, the invention
of alphabetical writing, Plato did not look with much complacency. He
seems to have thought that the use of letters had operated on the human
mind as the use of the go-cart in learning to walk, or of corks in
learning to swim, is said to operate on the human body. It was a support
which, in his opinion, soon became indispensable to those who used it,
which made vigorous exertion first unnecessary and then impossible.
The powers of the intellect would, he conceived, have been more fully
developed without this delusive aid. Men would have been compelled to
exercise? the understanding and the memory, and, by deep and assiduous
meditation, to make truth thoroughly their own. Now, on the contrary,
much knowledge is traced on paper, but little is engraved in the soul. A
man is certain that he can find information at a moment’s notice when
he wants it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his mind. Such a man
cannot in strictness
(1) _De Augmentis_, Lib. 3. Cap. 4.
(2) Astronomia viva.
(3) “Quæ substantiam et motum et influxum colestium, prout
re vera flint proponat.” Compare this language with Plato’s,
“[Greek]”
{454}be said to know any thing. He has the show without the reality of
wisdom. These opinions Plato has put into the mouth of an ancient king
of Egypt. (1) But it is evident from the context that they were his own;
and so they were understood to be by Quinctilian. (2) Indeed they are
in perfect accordance with the whole Platonic system.
Bacon’s views, as may easily be supposed, were widely different. (3) The
powers of the memory, he observes, without the help of writing, can do
little towards the advancement of any useful science. He acknowledges
that the memory may be disciplined to such a point as to be able to
perform very extraordinary feats. But on such feats he sets little
value. The habits of his mind, he tells us, are such that he is not
disposed to rate highly any accomplishment, however rare, which is of
no practical use to mankind. As to these prodigious achievements of the
memory, he ranks them with the exhibitions of rope-dancers and tumblers.
“The two performances,” he says, “are of much the same sort. The one is
an abuse of the powers of the body; the other is an abuse of the powers
of the mind. Both may perhaps excite our wonder; but neither is entitled
to our respect.”(4)
To Plato, the science of medicine appeared to be of very disputable
advantage. He did not indeed object to quick cures for acute disorders,
or for injuries produced by accidents. But the art which resists the
slow sap of a chronic disease, which repairs frames enervated by lust,
swollen by gluttony, or inflamed by wine, which encourages sensuality
by mitigating the natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs
existence
(1) Pinto’s Phaedrus.
(2) Quinctilian, XI.
(3) De Augmentis Lib. 5. Cup. 5.
(4) Pluto’s Republic, Book 3.
{455}when the intellect has ceased to retain its entire energy, had no
share of his esteem. A life protracted by medical skill he pronounced to
be a long death. The existence of the art of medicine ought, he said,
to be tolerated, so far as that art may serve to cure the occasional
distempers of men whose constitutions are good. As to those who have
bad constitutions, let them die; and the sooner the better. Such men
are unfit for war, for magistracy, for the management of their domestic
affairs, for severe study and speculation. If they engage in any
vigorous mental exercise, they are troubled with giddiness and fulness
of the head, all which they lay to the account of philosophy. The best
thing that can happen to such wretches is to have done with life at
once. He quotes mythical authority in support of this doctrine; and
reminds his disciples that the practice of the sons of Æsculapius, as
described by Homer, extended only to the cure of external injuries.
Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the sciences, that
which he seems to have regarded with the greatest interest was the
science which, in Plato’s opinion, would not be tolerated in a well
regulated community. To make men perfect was no part of Bacon’s plan.
His humble aim was to make imperfect men comfortable. The beneficence of
his philosophy resembled the beneficence of the common Father, whose sun
rises on the evil and the good, whose rain descends for the just and
the unjust. In Plato’s opinion man was made for philosophy; in Bacon’s
opinion philosophy was made for man; it was a means to an end; and that
end was to increase the pleasures and to mitigate the pains of millions
who are not and cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took
great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished {456}his
boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty
laugh over the Queen of Navarre’s tales, should be treated as a _caput
lupinum_ because he could not read the Timæus without a headache, was
a notion which the humane spirit of the English school of wisdom
altogether rejected. Bacon would not have thought it beneath the
dignity of a philosopher to contrive an improved garden chair for such
a valetudinarian, to devise some way of rendering his medicines more
palatable, to invent repasts which he might enjoy, and pillows on which
he might sleep soundly; and this though there might not be the
smallest hope that the mind of the poor invalid would ever rise to the
contemplation of the ideal beautiful and the ideal good. As Plato had
cited the religious legends of Greece to justify his contempt for the
more recondite parts of the art of healing, Bacon vindicated the dignity
of that art by appealing to the example of Christ, and reminded men that
the great Physician of the soul did not disdain to be also the physician
of the body. (1)
When we pass from the science of medicine to that of legislation, we
find the same difference between the systems of these two great men.
Plato, at the commencement of the Dialogue on Laws, lays it down as
a fundamental principle that the end of legislation is to make men
virtuous. It is unnecessary to point out the extravagant conclusions to
which such a proposition leads. Bacon well knew to how great an extent
the happiness of every society must depend on the virtue of its members;
and he also knew what legislators can and what they cannot do for the
purpose of promoting virtue. The view which he has given of the end of
(1) De Augmentis, Lib. 4. Cap. 2.
{457}legislation, and of the principal means for the attainment of that
end, has always seemed to us eminently happy, even among the many happy
passages of the same kind with which his works abound. “Finis et scopus
quem leges intueri atopie ad quern jussion es et sanction es suas
dirigere debent, non alius est quam ut cives féliciter degant. Id fixet
si pietate et religione recte instituti, moribus honesti, armis ad
versus liostes externos tuti, legum auxilio adversus seditiones et
pri-vatas injurias muniti, imperio et magistratibus obse-quentes, copiis
et opibus locupletes et florentes fluent.” (1) The end is the well-being
of the people. The means are the imparting of moral and religious
education; the providing of every thing necessary for defence against
foreign enemies; the maintaining of internal order; the establishing of
a judicial, financial, and commercial system, under which wealth may be
rapidly accumulated and securely enjoyed.
Even with respect to the form in which laws ought to be drawn, there is
a remarkable difference of opinion between the Greek and the Englishman.
Plato thought a preamble essential; Bacon thought it mischievous. Each
was consistent with himself. Plato, considering the moral improvement of
the people as the end of legislation, justly inferred that a law which
commanded and threatened, but which neither convinced the reason, nor
touched the heart, must be a most imperfect law. He was not content with
deterring from theft a man who still continued to be a thief at heart,
with restraining a son who hated his mother from beating his mother.
The only obedience on which he set much value was the obedience which an
enlightened
(1) De Augmentis, Lib. 8. Cap. 3. Aph. 5.
{458}understanding yields to reason, and which a virtuous disposition
yields to precepts of virtue. He really seems to have believed that, by
prefixing to every law an eloquent and pathetic exhortation, he
should, to a great extent, render penal enactments superfluous. Bacon
entertained no such romantic hopes; and he well knew the practical
inconveniences of the course which Plato recommended. “Neque nobis,”
says he, “prologi legum qui inepti olim liabiti sunt, et leges
in-troducunt disputantes non jubentes, utique placèrent, si priscos
mores ferre possemus....Quantum fieri potest prologi evitentur, et lex
incipiat a jussione.” (1)
Each of the great men whom we have compared intended to illustrate his
system by a philosophical romance; and each left his romance imperfect.
Had Plato lived to finish the Critias, a comparison between that noble
fiction and the new Atlantis would probably have furnished us with still
more striking instances than any which we have given. It is amusing
to think with what horror he would have seen such an institution as
Solomon’s House rising in his republic: with what vehemence he would
have ordered the brewhouses, the perfume-houses, and the dispensatories
to be pulled down; and with what inexorable rigour he would have driven
beyond the frontier all the Fellows of the College, Merchants of Light
and Depredators, Lamps and Pioneers.
To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic
philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian
philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues
to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise
(1) _De Augmentis_, Lib. 8. Cap. 3. Aph. 69.
{450}us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was
to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was
attainable.
Plato drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the
stars; and therefore, though there was no want of strength or skill,
the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed followed by a track of
dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing.
“Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo