(1) New Atlantis.
{489}history of Bacon’s mind is the order in which its powers expanded
themselves. With him the fruit came first and remained till the last;
the blossoms did not appear till late. In general, the development of
the fancy is to the development of the judgment what the growth of a
girl is to the growth of a boy. The fancy attains at an earlier period
to the perfection of its beauty, its power, and its fruitfulness; and,
as it is first to ripen, it is also first to fade. It has generally lost
something of its bloom and freshness before the sterner faculties
have reached maturity; and is commonly withered and barren while those
faculties still retain all their energy. It rarely happens that the
fancy and the judgment grow together. It happens still more rarely that
the judgment grows faster than the fancy. This seems, however, to have
been the case with Bacon. His boyhood and youth appear to have been
singularly sedate. His gigantic scheme of philosophical reform is said
by some writers to have been planned before he was fifteen, and was
undoubtedly planned while he was still young. He observed as vigilantly,
meditated as deeply, and judged as temperately when he gave his first
work to the world as at the close of his long career. But in eloquence,
in sweetness and variety of expression, and in richness of illustration,
his later writings are far superior to those of his youth. In this
respect the history of his mind bears some resemblance to the history
of the mind of Burke. The treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, though
written on a subject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat
without being occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most
unadorned of all Burke’s works. It appeared when he was twenty-five or
twenty-six. When, at forty, he wrote the Thoughts on the Causes of the
existing Discontents, {490}his reason and his judgment had readied
their full maturity; but his eloquence was still in its splendid dawn.
At fifty, his rhetoric was quite as rich as good taste would permit; and
when he died, at almost seventy, it had become ungracefully gorgeous. In
his youth he wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and cascades,
by the master-pieces of painting and sculpture, by the faces and necks
of beautiful women, in the style of a Parliamentary report. In his old
age he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant
language of romance. It is strange that the Essay on the Sublime and
Beautiful, and the Letter to a Noble Lord, should be the productions of
one man. But it is far more strange that the Essay should have been a
production of his youth, and the Letter of his old age.
We will give very short specimens of Bacon’s two styles. In 1597, he
wrote thus: “Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and
wise men use them; for they teach not their own use: that is a wisdom
without them, and won by observation. Read not to contradict, nor to
believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others
to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading maketh
a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And
therefore if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if
he confer little, have a present wit; and if he read little, have much
cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise, poets
witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, morals grave,
logic and rhetoric able to contend,” It will hardly be disputed that
this is a passage to be “chewed and digested.” We do not believe that
Thucydides himself {491}has anywhere compressed so much thought into so
small a space.
In the additions which Bacon afterwards made to the Essays, there is
nothing superior in truth or weight to what we have quoted. But his
style was constantly becoming richer and softer. The following passage,
first published in 1625, will show the extent of the change: “Prosperity
is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the
New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer evidence of
God’s favour. Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David’s
harp you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil
of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of
Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears
and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see
in needleworks and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively
work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy
work upon a lightsome ground. Judge therefore of the pleasure of the
heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious
odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity
doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”
It is by the Essays that Bacon is best known to the multitude. The
_Novum Organum_ and the _De Augmentis_ are much talked of, but little
read. They have produced indeed a vast effect on the opinions of
mankind; but they have produced it through the operation of intermediate
agents. They have moved the intellects which have moved the world. It
is in the Essays alone that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate
contact with the minds of ordinary readers. There he {492}opens an
exoteric school, and talks to plain men, in language which everybody
understands, about things in which everybody is interested. He has thus
enabled those who must otherwise have taken his merits on trust to
judge for themselves; and the great body of readers have, during
several generations, acknowledged that the man who has treated with such
consummate ability questions with which they are familiar may well be
supposed to deserve all the praise bestowed on him by those who have sat
in his inner school.
Without any disparagement to the admirable treatise _De Augmentis_,
we must say that, in our judgment, Bacon’s greatest performance is
the first book of the _Novum Organum_. All the peculiarities of his
extraordinary mind are found there in the highest perfection. Many of
the aphorisms, but particularly those in which he gives examples of the
influence of the _idola_, show a nicety of observation that has never
been surpassed. Every part of the book blazes with wit, but with wit
which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever
made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so many
prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. Yet no book was ever
written in a less contentious spirit. It truly conquers with chalk and
not with steel. Proposition after proposition enters into the mind,
is received not as an invader, but as a welcome friend, and though
previously unknown, becomes at once domesticated. But what we most
admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which, without effort,
takes in at once all the domains of science, all the past, the
present, and the future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the
encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the
coming age. Cowley, who was among the most ardent, and not {493}among
the least discerning followers of the new philosophy, has, in one of his
finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount Pisgah. It is to
Bacon, we think, as he appears in the first book of the _Novum Organum_,
that the comparison applies with peculiar felicity. There we see the
great Lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an infinite
expanse; behind him a wilderness of dreary sands, and bitter waters, in
which successive generations have sojourned, always moving, yet never
advancing, reaping no harvest, and building no abiding city; before him
a goodly land, a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey.
While the multitude below saw only the flat sterile desert in which
they had so long wandered, bounded on every side by a near horizon,
or diversified only by some deceitful mirage, he was gazing from a far
higher stand on a far lovelier country, following with his eye the long
course of fertilising rivers, through ample pastures, and under the
bridges of great capitals, measuring the distances of marts and havens,
and portioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beersheba.
It is painful to turn back from contemplating Bacon’s philosophy to
contemplate his life. Yet without so turning back it is impossible
fairly to estimate his powers. He left the University at an earlier age
than that at which most people repair thither. While yet a boy he was
plunged into the midst of diplomatic business. Thence he passed to the
study of a vast technical system of law, and worked his way up through a
succession of laborious offices, to the highest post in his profession.
In the mean time he took an active part in every Parliament; he was
an adviser of the Crown: he paid court with the greatest assiduity and
address to {494}all whose favour was likely to be of use to him;
he lived much in society; he noted the slightest peculiarities of
character, and the slightest changes of fashion. Scarcely any man has
led a more stirring life than that which Bacon led from sixteen to
sixty. Scarcely any man has been better entitled to be called a thorough
man of the world. The founding of a new philosophy, the imparting of a
new direction to the minds of speculators, this was the amusement of his
leisure, the work of hours occasionally stolen from the Woolsack and
the Council Board. This consideration, while it increases the admiration
with which we regard his intellect, increases also our regret that such
an intellect should so often have been unworthily employed. He well
knew the better course, and had, at one time, resolved to pursue it. “I
confess,” said he in a letter written when he was still young, “that I
have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends.” Had his
civil ends continued to be moderate, he would have been, not only the
Moses, but the Joshua of philosophy. He would have fulfilled a
large part of his own magnificent predictions. He would have led his
followers, not only to the verge, but into the heart of the promised
land. He would not merely have pointed out, but would have divided the
spoil. Above all, he would have left, not only a great, but a spotless
name. Mankind would then have been able to esteem their illustrious
benefactor. We should not then be compelled to regard his character with
mingled contempt and admiration, with mingled aversion and gratitude.
We should not then regret that there should be so many proofs of the
narrowness and selfishness of a heart, the benevolence of which was yet
large enough to take in all races and all ages. We {495}should not then
have to blush for the disingenuousness of the most devoted worshipper
of speculative truth, for the servility of the boldest champion of
intellectual freedom. We should not then have seen the same man at one
time far in the van, at another time far in the rear of his generation.
We should not then be forced to own that he who first treated
legislation as a science was among the last Englishmen who used the
rack, that he who first summoned philosophers to the great work of
interpreting nature, was among the last Englishmen who sold justice.
And we should conclude our survey of a life placidly, honourably,
beneficently passed, “in industrious observations, grounded conclusions,
and profitable inventions and discoveries,” (1) with feelings very
different from those with which we now turn away from the checkered
spectacle of so much glory and so much shame.
(1) From a Letter of Bacon to Lord Burleigh.