“If our German philosophy is considered in England and in France as German
dreaming, we ought not to render evil for evil, but rather to prove the
groundlessness of such accusations by endeavoring ourselves to appreciate,
without any prejudice, the philosophers of France and England, such as
they are, and doing them that justice which they deserve; especially as,
in scientific subjects, injustice means ignorance.” With these words M.
Kuno Fischer introduces his work on Bacon to the German public; and what
he says is evidently intended, not as an attack upon the conceit of
French, and the exclusiveness of English philosophers, but rather as an
apology which the author feels that he owes to his own countrymen. It
would seem, indeed, as if a German was bound to apologize for treating
Bacon as an equal of Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. Bacon’s name is
never mentioned by German writers without some proviso that it is only by
a great stretch of the meaning of the word, or by courtesy, that he can be
called a philosopher. His philosophy, it is maintained, ends where all
true philosophy begins; and his style or method has frequently been
described as unworthy of a systematic thinker. Spinoza, who has exercised
so great an influence on the history of thought in Germany, was among the
first who spoke slightingly of the inductive philosopher. When treating of
the causes of error, he writes, “What he (Bacon) adduces besides, in order
to explain error, can easily be traced back to the Cartesian theory; it is
this, that the human will is free and more comprehensive than the
understanding, or, as Bacon expresses himself in a more confused manner,
in the forty-ninth aphorism, ‘The human understanding is not a pure light,
but obscured by the will.’ ” In works on the general history of
philosophy, German authors find it difficult to assign any place to Bacon.
Sometimes he is classed with the Italian school of natural philosophy,
sometimes he is contrasted with Jacob Boehme. He is named as one of the
many who helped to deliver mankind from the thralldom of scholasticism.
But any account of what he really was, what he did to immortalize his
name, and to gain that prominent position among his own countrymen which
he has occupied to the present day, we should look for in vain even in the
most complete and systematic treatises on the history of philosophy
published in Germany. Nor does this arise from any wish to depreciate the
results of English speculation in general. On the contrary, we find that
Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are treated with great respect. They
occupy well-marked positions in the progress of philosophic thought. Their
names are written in large letters on the chief stations through which the
train of human reasoning passed before it arrived at Kant and Hegel.
Locke’s philosophy took for a time complete possession of the German mind,
and called forth some of the most important and decisive writings of
Leibnitz; and Kant himself owed his commanding position to the battle
which he fought and won against Hume. Bacon alone has never been either
attacked or praised, nor have his works, as it seems, ever been studied
very closely by Germans. As far as we can gather, their view of Bacon and
of English philosophy is something as follows. Philosophy, they say,
should account for experience; but Bacon took experience for granted. He
constructed a cyclopædia of knowledge, but he never explained what
knowledge itself was. Hence philosophy, far from being brought to a close
by his “Novum Organon,” had to learn again to make her first steps
immediately after his time. Bacon had built a magnificent palace, but it
was soon found that there was no staircase in it. The very first question
of all philosophy, “How do we know?” or, “How can we know?” had never been
asked by him. Locke, who came after him, was the first to ask it, and he
endeavored to answer it in his “Essay concerning Human Understanding.” The
result of his speculations was, that the mind is a _tabula rasa_, that
this _tabula rasa_ becomes gradually filled with sensuous perceptions, and
that these sensuous perceptions arrange themselves into classes, and thus
give rise to more general ideas or conceptions. This was a step in
advance; but there was again one thing taken for granted by Locke,—the
perceptions. This led to the next step in English philosophy, which was
made by Berkeley. He asked the question, “What are perceptions?” and he
answered it boldly: “Perceptions are the things themselves, and the only
cause of these perceptions is God.” But this bold step was in reality but
a bold retreat. Hume accepted the results both of Locke and Berkeley. He
admitted with Locke that the impressions of the senses are the source of
all knowledge; he admitted with Berkeley that we know nothing beyond the
impressions of our senses. But when Berkeley speaks of the cause of these
impressions, Hume points out that we have no right to speak of anything
like cause and effect, and that the idea of causality, of necessary
sequence, on which the whole fabric of our reasoning rests, is an
assumption; inevitable, it may be, yet an assumption. Thus English
philosophy, which seemed to be so settled and positive in Bacon, ended in
the most unsettled and negative skepticism in Hume; and it was only
through Kant that, according to the Germans, the great problem was solved
at last, and men again knew _how_ they knew.
From this point of view, which we believe to be that generally taken by
German writers of the historical progress of modern philosophy, we may
well understand why the star of Bacon should disappear almost below their
horizon. And if those only are to be called philosophers who inquire into
the causes of our knowledge, or into the possibility of knowing and being,
a new name must be invented for men like him, who are concerned alone with
the realities of knowledge. The two are antipodes,—they inhabit two
distinct hemispheres of thought. But German Idealism, as M. Kuno Fischer
says, would have done well if it had become more thoroughly acquainted
with its opponent:—
“And if it be objected,” he says, “that the points of contact
between German and English philosophy, between Idealism and
Realism, are less to be found in Bacon than in other philosophers
of his kind; that it was not Bacon, but Hume, who influenced Kant;
that it was not Bacon, but Locke, who influenced Leibnitz; that
Spinoza, if he received any impulse at all from those quarters,
received it from Hobbes, and not from Bacon, of whom he speaks in
several places very contemptuously,—I answer, that it was Bacon
whom Des Cartes, the acknowledged founder of dogmatic Idealism,
chose for his antagonist. And as to those realistic philosophers
who have influenced the opposite side of philosophy in Spinoza,
Leibnitz, and Kant, I shall be able to prove that Hobbes, Locke,
Hume, are all descendants of Bacon, that they have their roots in
Bacon, that without Bacon they cannot be truly explained and
understood, but only be taken up in a fragmentary form, and, as it
were, plucked off. Bacon is the creator of realistic philosophy.
Their age is but a development of the Baconian germs; every one of
their systems is a metamorphosis of Baconian philosophy. To the
present day, realistic philosophy has never had a greater genius
than Bacon, its founder; none who has manifested the truly
realistic spirit that feels itself at home in the midst of life,
in so comprehensive, so original and characteristic, so sober, and
yet at the same time so ideal and aspiring a manner; none, again,
in whom the limits of this spirit stand out in such distinct and
natural relief. Bacon’s philosophy is the most healthy and quite
inartificial expression of Realism. After the systems of Spinoza
and Leibnitz had moved me for a long time, had filled, and, as it
were, absorbed me, the study of Bacon was to me like a new life,
the fruits of which are gathered in this book.”
After a careful perusal of M. Fischer’s work, we believe that it will not
only serve in Germany as a useful introduction to the study of Bacon, but
that it will be read with interest and advantage by many persons in
England who are already acquainted with the chief works of the
philosopher. The analysis which he gives of Bacon’s philosophy is accurate
and complete; and, without indulging in any lengthy criticisms, he has
thrown much light on several important points. He first discusses the aim
of his philosophy, and characterizes it as Discovery in general, as the
conquest of nature by man (_Regnum hominis, interpretatio naturæ_). He
then enters into the means which it supplies for accomplishing this
conquest, and which consist chiefly in experience:—
“The chief object of Bacon’s philosophy is the establishment and
extension of the dominion of man. The means of accomplishing this
we may call culture, or the application of physical powers toward
human purposes. But there is no such culture without discovery,
which produces the means of culture; no discovery without science,
which understands the laws of nature; no science without natural
science; no natural science without an interpretation of nature;
and this can only be accomplished according to the measure of our
experience.”
M. Fischer then proceeds to discuss what he calls the negative or
destructive part of Bacon’s philosophy (_pars destruens_),—that is to say,
the means by which the human mind should be purified and freed from all
preconceived notions before it approaches the interpretation of nature. He
carries us through the long war which Bacon commenced against the idols of
traditional or scholastic science. We see how the _idola tribus_, the
_idola specus_, the _idola fori_, and the _idola theatri_, are destroyed
by his iconoclastic philosophy. After all these are destroyed, there
remains nothing but uncertainty and doubt; and it is in this state of
nudity, approaching very nearly to the _tabula rasa_ of Locke, that the
human mind should approach the new temple of nature. Here lies the radical
difference between Bacon and Des Cartes, between Realism and Idealism. Des
Cartes also, like Bacon, destroys all former knowledge. He proves that we
know nothing for certain. But after he has deprived the human mind of all
its imaginary riches, he does not lead it on, like Bacon, to a study of
nature, but to a study of itself as the only subject which can be known
for certain, _Cogito, ergo sum_. His philosophy leads to a study of the
fundamental laws of knowing and being; that of Bacon enters at once into
the gates of nature, with the innocence of a child (to use his own
expression) who enters the kingdom of God. Bacon speaks, indeed, of a
_Philosophia prima_ as a kind of introduction to Divine, Natural, and
Human Philosophy; but he does not discuss in this preliminary chapter the
problem of the possibility of knowledge, nor was it with him the right
place to do so. It was destined by him as a “receptacle for all such
profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of the
special parts of philosophy or sciences, but are more common, and of a
higher stage.” He mentions himself some of these axioms, such as—“_Si
inæqualibus æqualia addas, omnia erunt inæqualia;_” “_Quæ in eodem tertio
conveniunt, et inter se conveniunt;_” “_Omnia mutantur, nil interit._” The
problem of the possibility of knowledge would generally be classed under
metaphysics; but what Bacon calls _Metaphysique_ is, with him, a branch of
philosophy treating only on Formal and Final Causes, in opposition to
_Physique_, which treats on Material and Efficient Causes. If we adopt
Bacon’s division of philosophy, we might still expect to find the
fundamental problem discussed in his chapter on Human Philosophy; but
here, again, he treats man only as a part of the continent of Nature, and
when he comes to consider the substance and nature of the soul or mind, he
declines to enter into this subject, because “the true knowledge of the
nature and state of soul must come by the same inspiration that gave the
substance.” There remains, therefore, but one place in Bacon’s cyclopædia
where we might hope to find some information on this subject,—namely,
where he treats on the faculties and functions of the mind, and in
particular, of understanding and reason. And here he dwells indeed on the
doubtful evidence of the senses as one of the causes of error so
frequently pointed out by other philosophers. But he remarks that, though
they charged the deceit upon the senses, their chief errors arose from a
different cause, from the weakness of their intellectual powers, and from
the manner of collecting and concluding upon the reports of the senses.
And he then points to what is to be the work of his life,—an improved
system of invention, consisting of the _Experientia Literata_, and the
_Interpretatio Naturæ_.
It must be admitted, therefore, that one of the problems which has
occupied most philosophers,—nay, which, in a certain sense, may be called
the first impulse to all philosophy,—the question whether we can know
anything, is entirely passed over by Bacon; and we may well understand why
the name and title of philosopher has been withheld from one who looked
upon human knowledge as an art, but never inquired into its causes and
credentials. This is a point which M. Fischer has not overlooked; but he
has not always kept it in view, and in wishing to secure to Bacon his
place in the history of philosophy, he has deprived him of that more
exalted place which Bacon himself wished to occupy in the history of the
world. Among men like Locke, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, Bacon is, and always
will be, a stranger. Bacon himself would have drawn a very strong line
between their province and his own. He knows where their province lies;
and if he sometimes speaks contemptuously of formal philosophy, it is only
when formal philosophy has encroached on his own ground, or when it breaks
into the enclosure of revealed religion, which he wished to be kept
sacred. There, he holds, the human mind should not enter, except in the
attitude of the Semnones, with chained hands.
Bacon’s philosophy could never supplant the works of Plato and Aristotle,
and though his method might prove useful in every branch of
knowledge,—even in the most abstruse points of logic and metaphysics,—yet
there has never been a Baconian school of philosophy, in the sense in
which we speak of the school of Locke or Kant. Bacon was above or below
philosophy. Philosophy, in the usual sense of the word, formed but a part
of his great scheme of knowledge. It had its place therein, side by side
with history, poetry, and religion. After he had surveyed the whole
universe of knowledge, he was struck by the small results that had been
obtained by so much labor, and he discovered the cause of this failure in
the want of a proper method of investigation and combination. The
substitution of a new method of invention was the great object of his
philosophical activity; and though it has been frequently said that the
Baconian method had been known long before Bacon, and had been practiced
by his predecessors with much greater success than by himself or his
immediate followers, it was his chief merit to have proclaimed it, and to
have established its legitimacy against all gainsayers. M. Fischer has
some very good remarks on Bacon’s method of induction, particularly on the
_instantiæ prærogativæ_ which, as he points out, though they show the
weakness of his system, exhibit at the same time the strength of his mind,
which rises above all the smaller considerations of systematic
consistency, where higher objects are at stake.
M. Fischer devotes one chapter to Bacon’s relation to the ancient
philosophers, and another to his views on poetry. In the latter, he
naturally compares Bacon with his contemporary, Shakespeare. We recommend
this chapter, as well as a similar one in a work on Shakespeare by
Gervinus, to the author of the ingenious discovery that Bacon was the real
author of Shakespeare’s plays. Besides an analysis of the constructive
part of Bacon’s philosophy, or the _Instauratio Magna_, M. Fischer gives
us several interesting chapters, in which he treats of Bacon as an
historical character, of his views on religion and theology, and of his
reviewers. His defense of Bacon’s political character is the weakest part
of his work. He draws an elaborate parallel between the spirit of Bacon’s
philosophy and the spirit of his public acts. Discovery, he says, was the
object of the philosopher; success that of the politician. But what can be
gained by such parallels? We admire Bacon’s ardent exertions for the
successful advancement of learning, but, if his acts for his own
advancement were blamable, no moralist, whatever notions he may hold on
the relation between the understanding and the will, would be swayed in
his judgment of Lord Bacon’s character by such considerations. We make no
allowance for the imitative talents of a tragedian, if he stands convicted
of forgery, nor for the courage of a soldier, if he is accused of murder.
Bacon’s character can only be judged by the historian, and by a careful
study of the standard of public morality in Bacon’s times. And the same
may be said of the position which he took with regard to religion and
theology. We may explain his inclination to keep religion distinct from
philosophy by taking into account the practical tendencies of all his
labors. But there is such a want of straightforwardness, and we might
almost say, of real faith, in his theological statements, that no one can
be surprised to find that, while he is taken as the representative of
orthodoxy by some, he has been attacked by others as the most dangerous
and insidious enemy of Christianity. Writers of the school of De Maistre
see in him a decided atheist and hypocrite.
In a work on Bacon, it seems to have become a necessity to discuss Bacon’s
last reviewer, and M. Fischer therefore breaks a lance with Mr. Macaulay.
We give some extracts from this chapter (page 358 _seq._), which will
serve, at the same time, as a specimen of our author’s style:—
“Mr. Macaulay pleads unconditionally in favor of practical
philosophy, which he designates by the name of Bacon, against all
theoretical philosophy. We have two questions to ask: 1. What does
Mr. Macaulay mean by the contrast of practical and theoretical
philosophy, on which he dwells so constantly? and 2. What has his
own practical philosophy in common with that of Bacon?
“Mr. Macaulay decides on the fate of philosophy with a ready
formula, which, like many of the same kind, dazzles by means of
words which have nothing behind them,—words which become more
obscure and empty the nearer we approach them. He says, Philosophy
was made for Man, not Man for Philosophy. In the former case it is
practical; in the latter, theoretical. Mr. Macaulay embraces the
first, and rejects the second. He cannot speak with sufficient
praise of the one, nor with sufficient contempt of the other.
According to him, the Baconian philosophy is practical; the
pre-Baconian, and particularly the ancient philosophy,
theoretical. He carries the contrast between the two to the last
extreme, and he places it before our eyes, not in its naked form,
but veiled in metaphors, and in well-chosen figures of speech,
where the imposing and charming image always represents the
practical, the repulsive the theoretical, form of philosophy. By
this play he carries away the great mass of people, who, like
children, always run after images. Practical philosophy is not so
much a conviction with him, but it serves him to make a point;
whereas theoretical philosophy serves as an easy butt. Thus the
contrast between the two acquires a certain dramatic charm. The
reader feels moved and excited by the subject before him, and
forgets the scientific question. His fancy is caught by a kind of
metaphorical imagery, and his understanding surrenders what is due
to it.... What is Mr. Macaulay’s meaning in rejecting theoretical
philosophy, because philosophy is here the object, and man the
means; whereas he adopts practical philosophy, because man is here
the object, and philosophy the means? What do we gain by such
comparisons, as when he says that practical and theoretical
philosophy are like works and words, fruits and thorns, a
high-road and a treadmill? Such phrases always remind us of the
remark of Socrates: They are said indeed, but are they well and
truly said? According to the strict meaning of Mr. Macaulay’s
words, there never was a practical philosophy; for there never was
a philosophy which owed its origin to practical considerations
only. And there never was a theoretical philosophy, for there
never was a philosophy which did not receive its impulse from a
human want, that is to say, from a practical motive. This shows
where playing with words must always lead. He defines theoretical
and practical philosophy in such a manner that his definition is
inapplicable to any kind of philosophy. His antithesis is entirely
empty. But if we drop the antithesis, and only keep to what it
means in sober and intelligible language, it would come to
this,—that the value of a theory depends on its usefulness, on its
practical influence on human life, on the advantage which we
derive from it. Utility alone is to decide on the value of a
theory. Be it so. But who is to decide on utility? If all things
are useful which serve to satisfy human wants, who is to decide on
our wants? We take Mr. Macaulay’s own point of view. Philosophy
should be practical; it should serve man, satisfy his wants, or
help to satisfy them; and if it fails in this, let it be called
useless and hollow. But if there are wants in human nature which
demand to be satisfied, which make life a burden unless they are
satisfied, is that not to be called practical which answers to
these wants? And if some of them are of that peculiar nature that
they can only be satisfied by knowledge, or by theoretical
contemplation, is this knowledge, is this theoretical
contemplation, not useful,—useful even in the eyes of the most
decided Utilitarian? Might it not happen that what he calls
theoretical philosophy seems useless and barren to the
Utilitarian, because his ideas of men are too narrow? It is
dangerous, and not quite becoming, to lay down the law, and say
from the very first, ‘You must not have more than certain wants,
and therefore you do not want more than a certain philosophy!’ If
we may judge from Mr. Macaulay’s illustrations, his ideas of human
nature are not very liberal. ‘If we were forced,’ he says, ‘to
make our choice between the first shoemaker and Seneca, the author
of the books on Anger, we should pronounce for the shoemaker. It
may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept
millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept
anybody from being angry.’ I should not select Seneca as the
representative of theoretical philosophy, still less take those
for my allies whom Mr. Macaulay prefers to Seneca, in order to
defeat theoretical philosophers. Brennus threw his sword into the
scale in order to make it more weighty. Mr. Macaulay prefers the
awl. But whatever he may think about Seneca, there is another
philosopher more profound than Seneca, but in Mr. Macaulay’s eyes
likewise an unpractical thinker. And yet in him the power of
theory was greater than the powers of nature and the most common
wants of man. His meditations alone gave Socrates his serenity
when he drank the fatal poison. Is there, among all evils, one
greater than the dread of death? And the remedy against this, the
worst of all physical evils, is it not practical in the best sense
of the word? True, some people might here say, that it would have
been more practical if Socrates had fled from his prison, as
Criton suggested, and had died an old and decrepit man in Bœotia.
But to Socrates it seemed more practical to remain in prison, and
to die as the first witness and martyr of the liberty of
conscience, and to rise from the sublime height of his theory to
the seats of the immortals. Thus it is the want of the individual
which decides on the practical value of an act or of a thought,
and this want depends on the nature of the human soul. There is a
difference between individuals in different ages, and there is a
difference in their wants.... As long as the desire after
knowledge lives in our hearts, we must, with the purely practical
view of satisfying this want, strive after knowledge in all
things, even in those which do not contribute towards external
comfort, and have no use except that they purify and invigorate
the mind.... What is theory in the eyes of Bacon? ‘A temple in the
human mind, according to the model of the world.’ What is it in
the eyes of Mr. Macaulay? A snug dwelling, according to the wants
of practical life. The latter is satisfied if knowledge is carried
far enough to enable us to keep ourselves dry. The magnificence of
the structure, and its completeness according to the model of the
world, is to him useless by-work, superfluous and even dangerous
luxury. This is the view of a respectable rate-payer, not of a
Bacon. Mr. Macaulay reduces Bacon to his own dimensions, while he
endeavors at the same time to exalt him above all other people....
Bacon’s own philosophy was, like all philosophy, a theory; it was
the theory of the inventive mind. Bacon has not made any great
discoveries himself. He was less inventive than Leibnitz, the
German metaphysician. If to make discoveries be practical
philosophy, Bacon was a mere theorist, and his philosophy nothing
but the theory of practical philosophy.... How far the spirit of
theory reached in Bacon may be seen in his own works. He did not
want to fetter theory, but to renew and to extend it to the very
ends of the universe. His practical standard was not the comfort
of the individual, but human happiness, which involves theoretical
knowledge.... That Bacon is not the Bacon of Mr. Macaulay. What
Bacon wanted was new, and it will be eternal. What Mr. Macaulay
and many people at the present day want, in the name of Bacon, is
not new, but novel. New is what opposes the old, and serves as a
model for the future. Novel is what flatters our times, gains
sympathies, and dies away.... And history has pronounced her final
verdict. It is the last negative instance which we oppose to Mr.
Macaulay’s assertion. Bacon’s philosophy has not been the end of
all theories, but the beginning of new theories,—theories which
flowed necessarily from Bacon’s philosophy, and not one of which
was practical in Mr. Macaulay’s sense. Hobbes was the pupil of
Bacon. His ideal of a State is opposed to that of Plato on all
points. But one point it shares in common,—it is as unpractical a
theory as that of Plato. Mr. Macaulay, however, calls Hobbes the
most acute and vigorous spirit. If, then, Hobbes was a practical
philosopher, what becomes of Macaulay’s politics? And if Hobbes
was not a practical philosopher, what becomes of Mr. Macaulay’s
philosophy, which does homage to the theories of Hobbes?”
We have somewhat abridged M. Fischer’s argument, for, though he writes
well and intelligibly, he wants condensation; and we do not think that his
argument has been weakened by being shortened. What he has extended into a
volume of nearly five hundred pages, might have been reduced to a pithy
essay of one or two hundred, without sacrificing one essential fact, or
injuring the strength of any one of his arguments. The art of writing in
our times is the art of condensing; and those who cannot condense write
only for readers who have more time at their disposal than they know what
to do with.
Let us ask one question in conclusion. Why do all German writers change
the thoroughly Teutonic name of Bacon into Baco? It is bad enough that we
should speak of Plato; but this cannot be helped. But unless we protest
against Baco, _gen._ Baconis, we shall soon be treated to Newto, Newtonis,
or even to Kans, Kantis.
1857.