And here again we are compelled to take issue with Macaulay, not in
regard to the great fact that Bacon's inquiries tended to a new
revelation of Nature, and by means of the method called induction,
by which he sought to establish fixed principles of science that
could not be controverted, but in reference to the ends for which
he labored. "The aim of Bacon," says Macaulay, "was utility,--
fruit; the multiplication of human enjoyments, . . . the mitigation
of human sufferings, . . . the prolongation of life by new
inventions,"--dotare vitam humanum novis inventis et copiis; "the
conquest of Nature,"--dominion over the beasts of the field and the
fowls of the air; the application of science to the subjection of
the outward world; progress in useful arts,--in those arts which
enable us to become strong, comfortable, and rich in houses, shops,
fabrics, tools, merchandise, new vegetables, fruits, and animals:
in short, a philosophy which will "not raise us above vulgar wants,
but will supply those wants." "And as an acre in Middlesex is
worth more than a principality in Utopia, so the smallest practical
good is better than any magnificent effort to realize an
impossibility;" and "hence the first shoemaker has rendered more
substantial service to mankind than all the sages of Greece. All
they could do was to fill the world with long beards and long
words; whereas Bacon's philosophy has lengthened life, mitigated
pain, extinguished disease, built bridges, guided the thunderbolts,
lightened the night with the splendor of the day, accelerated
motion, annihilated distance, facilitated intercourse; enabled men
to descend to the depths of the earth, to traverse the land in cars
which whirl without horses, and the ocean in ships which sail
against the wind." In other words, it was his aim to stimulate
mankind, not to seek unattainable truth, but useful truth; that is,
the science which produces railroads, canals, cultivated farms,
ships, rich returns for labor, silver and gold from the mines,--all
that purchase the joys of material life and fit us for dominion
over the world in which we live. Hence anything which will curtail
our sufferings and add to our pleasures or our powers, should be
sought as the highest good. Geometry is desirable, not as a noble
intellectual exercise, but as a handmaid to natural philosophy.
Astronomy is not to assist the mind to lofty contemplation, but to
enable mariners to verify degrees of latitude and regulate clocks.
A college is not designed to train and discipline the mind, but to
utilize science, and become a school of technology. Greek and
Latin exercises are comparatively worthless, and even mathematics,
unless they can be converted into practical use. Philosophy, as
ordinarily understood,--that is, metaphysics,--is most idle of all,
since it does not pertain to mundane wants. Hence the old Grecian
philosopher labored in vain; and still more profitless were the
disquisitions of the scholastics of the Middle Ages, since they
were chiefly used to prop up unintelligible creeds. Theology is
not of much account, since it pertains to mysteries we cannot
solve. It is not with heaven or hell, or abstract inquiries, or
divine certitudes, that we have to do, but the things of earth,--
things that advance our material and outward condition. To be rich
and comfortable is the end of life,--not meditations on abstract
and eternal truth, such as elevate the soul or prepare it for a
future and endless life. The certitudes of faith, of love, of
friendship, are of small value when compared with the blessings of
outward prosperity. Utilitarianism is the true philosophy, for
this confines us to the world where we are born to labor, and
enables us to make acquisitions which promote our comfort and ease.
The chemist and the manufacturer are our greatest benefactors, for
they make for us oils and gases and paints,--things we must have.
The philosophy of Bacon is an immense improvement on all previous
systems, since it heralds the jubilee of trades, the millennium of
merchants, the schools of thrift, the apostles of physical
progress, the pioneers of enterprise,--the Franklins and
Stephensons and Tyndalls and Morses of our glorious era. Its
watchword is progress. All hail, then, to the electric telegraph
and telephones and Thames tunnels and Crystal Palaces and Niagara
bridges and railways over the Rocky Mountains! The day of our
deliverance is come; the nations are saved; the Brunels and the
Fieldses are our victors and leaders! Crown them with Olympic
leaves, as the heroes of our great games of life. And thou, O
England! exalted art thou among the nations,--not for thy Oxfords
and Westminsters; not for thy divines and saints and martyrs and
poets; not for thy Hookers and Leightons and Cranmers and Miltons
and Burkes and Lockes; not for thy Reformation; not for thy
struggles for liberty,--but for thy Manchesters and Birminghams,
thy Portsmouth shipyards, thy London docks, thy Liverpool
warehouses, thy mines of coal and iron, thy countless mechanisms by
which thou bringest the wealth of nations into thy banks, and art
enabled to buy the toil of foreigners and to raise thy standards on
the farthest battlements of India and China. These conquests and
acquisitions are real, are practical; machinery over life, the
triumph of physical forces, dominion over waves and winds,--these
are the great victories which consummate the happiness of man; and
these are they which flow from the philosophy which Bacon taught.
Now Macaulay does not directly say all these things, but these are
the spirit and gist of the interpretation which he puts upon
Bacon's writings. The philosophy of Bacon leads directly to these
blessings; and these constitute its great peculiarity. And it
cannot be denied that the new era which Bacon heralded was fruitful
in these very things,--that his philosophy encouraged this new
development of material forces; but it may be questioned whether he
had not something else in view than mere utility and physical
progress, and whether his method could not equally be applied to
metaphysical subjects; whether it did not pertain to the whole
domain of truth, and take in the whole realm of human inquiry. I
believe that Bacon was interested, not merely in the world of
matter, but in the world of mind; that he sought to establish
principles from which sound deductions might be made, as well as to
establish reliable inductions. Lord Campbell thinks that a perfect
system of ethics could be made out of his writings, and that his
method is equally well adapted to examine and classify the
phenomena of the mind. He separated the legitimate paths of human
inquiry, giving his attention to poetry and politics and
metaphysics, as well as to physics. Bacon does not sneer as
Macaulay does at the ancient philosophers; he bears testimony to
their genius and their unrivalled dialectical powers, even if he
regards their speculations as frequently barren. He does not
flippantly ridicule the homoousian and the homoiousian as mere
words, but the expression and exponent of profound theological
distinctions, as every theologian knows them to be. He does not
throw dirt on metaphysical science if properly directed, still less
on noble inquiries after God and the mysteries of life. He is
subjective as well as objective. He treats of philosophy in its
broadest meaning, as it takes in the province of the understanding,
the memory, and the will, as well as of man in society. He speaks
of the principles of government and of the fountains of law; of
universal justice, of eternal spiritual truth. So that Playfair
judiciously observes (and he was a scientist) "that it was not by
sagacious anticipations of science, afterwards to be made in
physics, that his writings have had so powerful an influence,
as in his knowledge of the limits and resources of the human
understanding. It would be difficult to find another writer, prior
to Locke, whose works are enriched with so many just observations
on mere intellectual phenomena. What he says of the laws of
memory, or imagination, has never been surpassed in subtlety. No
man ever more carefully studied the operation of his own mind and
the intellectual character of others." Nor did Bacon despise
metaphysical science, only the frivolous questions that the old
scholastics associated with it, and the general barrenness of their
speculations. He surely would not have disdained the subsequent
inquiries of Locke, or Berkeley, or Leibnitz, or Kant. True, he
sought definite knowledge,--something firm to stand upon, and which
could not be controverted. No philosophy can be sound when the
principle from which deductions are made is not itself certain or
very highly probable, or when this principle, pushed to its utmost
logical sequence, would lead to absurdity, or even to a conflict
with human consciousness. To Bacon the old methods were wrong, and
it was his primal aim to reform the scientific methods in order to
arrive at truth; not truth for utilitarian ends chiefly, but truth
for its own sake. He loved truth as Palestrina loved music, or
Raphael loved painting, or Socrates loved virtue.
Now the method which was almost exclusively employed until Bacon's
time is commonly called the deductive method; that is, some
principle or premise was assumed to be true, and reasoning was made
from this assumption. No especial fault was found with the
reasoning of the great masters of logic like Aristotle and Thomas
Aquinas, for it never has been surpassed in acuteness and severity.
If their premises were admitted, their conclusions would follow as
a certainty. What was wanted was to establish the truth of
premises, or general propositions. This Bacon affirmed could be
arrived at only by induction; that is, the ascending from
ascertained individual facts to general principles, by extending
what is true of particulars to the whole class in which they
belong. Bacon has been called the father of inductive science,
since he would employ the inductive method. Yet he is not truly
the father of induction, since it is as old as the beginnings of
science. Hippocrates, when he ridiculed the quacks of his day, and
collected the facts and phenomena of disease, and inferred from
them the proper treatment of it, was as much the father of
induction as Bacon himself. The error the ancients made was in not
collecting a sufficient number of facts to warrant a sound
induction. And the ancients looked out for facts to support some
preconceived theory, from which they reasoned syllogistically. The
theory could not be substantiated by any syllogistic reasonings,
since conclusions could never go beyond assumptions; if the
assumptions were wrong, no ingenious or elaborate reasoning would
avail anything towards the discovery of truth, but could only
uphold what was assumed. This applied to theology as well as to
science. In the Dark Ages it was well for the teachers of mankind
to uphold the dogmas of the Church, which they did with masterly
dialectical skill. Those were ages of Faith, and not of Inquiry.
It was all-important to ground believers in a firm faith of the
dogmas which were deemed necessary to support the church and the
cause of religion. They were regarded as absolute certainties.
There was no dispute about the premises of the scholastic's
arguments; and hence his dialectics strengthened the mind by the
exercise of logical sports, and at the same time confirmed the
faith.
The world never saw a more complete system of dogmatic theology
than that elaborated by Thomas Aquinas. When the knowledge of the
Greek and Hebrew was rare and imperfect, and it was impossible to
throw light by means of learning and science on the texts of
Scripture, it was well to follow the interpretation of such a great
light as Augustine, and assume his dogmas as certainties, since
they could not then be controverted; and thus from them construct a
system of belief which would confirm the faith. But Aquinas, with
his Aristotelian method of syllogism and definitions, could not go
beyond Augustine. Augustine was the fountain, and the water that
flowed from it in ten thousand channels could not rise above the
spring; and as everybody appealed to and believed in Saint
Augustine, it was well to construct a system from him to confute
the heretical, and which the heretical would respect. The
scholastic philosophy which some ridicule, in spite of its
puerilities and sophistries and syllogisms, preserved the theology
of the Middle Ages, perhaps of the Fathers. It was a mighty
bulwark of the faith which was then accepted. No honors could be
conferred on its great architects that were deemed extravagant.
The Pope and the clergy saw in Thomas Aquinas the great defender of
the Church,--not of its abuses, but of its doctrines. And if no
new light can be shed on the Scripture text from which assumptions
were made; if these assumptions cannot be assailed, if they are
certitudes,--then we can scarcely have better text-books than those
furnished to the theologians of the Middle Ages, for no modern
dialetician can excel them in severity of logic. The great object
of modern theologians should be to establish the authenticity and
meaning of the Scripture texts on which their assumptions rest; and
this can be done only by the method which Bacon laid down, which is
virtually a collation and collection of facts,--that is, divine
declarations. Establish the meaning of these without question, and
we have principia from which we may deduce creeds and systems, the
usefulness of which cannot be exaggerated, especially in an age of
agnosticism. Having fundamental principles which cannot be
gainsaid, we may philosophically draw deductions. Bacon did not
make war on deduction, when its fundamental truths are established.
Deduction is as much a necessary part of philosophy as induction:
it is the peculiarity of the Scotch metaphysicians, who have ever
deduced truths from those previously established. Deduction even
enters into modern science as well as induction. When Cuvier
deduced from a bone the form and habits of the mastodon; when
Kepler deduced his great laws, all from the primary thought that
there must be some numerical or geographical relation between the
times, distances, and velocities of the revolving bodies of the
solar system; when Newton deduced, as is said, the principle of
gravitation from the fall of an apple; when Leverrier sought for a
new planet from the perturbations of the heavenly bodies in their
orbits,--we feel that deduction is as much a legitimate process as
induction itself.
But deductive logic is the creation of Aristotle; and it was the
authority of Aristotle that Bacon sought to subvert. The inductive
process is also old, of which Bacon is called the father. How are
these things to be reconciled and explained? Wherein and how did
Bacon adapt his method to the discovery of truth, which was his
principal aim,--that method which is the great cause of modern
progress in science, the way to it being indicated by him pre-
eminently?
The whole thing consists in this, that Bacon pointed out the right
road to truth,--as a board where two roads meet or diverge
indicates the one which is to be followed. He did not make a
system, like Descartes or Spinoza or Newton: he showed the way to
make it on sound principles. "He laid down a systematic analysis
and arrangement of inductive evidence." The syllogism, the great
instrument used by Aristotle and the Schoolmen, "is, from its very
nature, incompetent to prove the ultimate premises from which it
proceeds; and when the truth of these remains doubtful, we can
place no confidence in the conclusions drawn from them." Hence,
the first step in the reform of science is to review its ultimate
principles; and the first condition of a scientific method is that
it shall be competent to conduct such an inquiry; and this method
is applicable, not to physical science merely, but to the whole
realm of knowledge. This, of course, includes poetry, art,
intellectual philosophy, and theology, as well as geology and
chemistry.
And it is this breadth of inquiry--directed to subjective as well
as objective knowledge--which made Bacon so great a benefactor.
The defect in Macaulay's criticism is that he makes Bacon
interested in mere outward phenomena, or matters of practical
utility,--a worldly utilitarian of whom Epicureans may be proud.
In reality he soared to the realm of Plato as well as of Aristotle.
Take, for instance, his Idola Mentis Humanae, or "Phantoms of the
Human Mind," which compose the best-known part of the "Novum
Organum." "The Idols of the Tribe" would show the folly of
attempting to penetrate further than the limits of the human
faculties permit, as also "the liability of the intellect to be
warped by the will and affections, and the like." The "Idols of
the Den" have reference to "the tendency to notice differences
rather than resemblances, or resemblances rather than differences,
in the attachment to antiquity or novelty, in the partiality to
minute or comprehensive investigations." "The Idols of the Market-
Place" have reference to the tendency to confound words with
things, which has ever marked controversialists in their learned
disputatious. In what he here says about the necessity for
accurate definitions, he reminds us of Socrates rather than a
modern scientist; this necessity for accuracy applies to
metaphysics as much as it does to physics. "The Idols of the
Theatre" have reference to perverse laws of demonstration which are
the strongholds of error. This school deals in speculations and
experiments confined to a narrow compass, like those of the
alchemists,--too imperfect to elicit the light which should guide.
Bacon having completed his discussion of the Idola, then proceeds,
to point out the weakness of the old philosophies, which produced
leaves rather than fruit, and were stationary in their character.
Here he would seem to lean towards utilitarianism, were it not that
he is as severe on men of experiment as on men of dogma. "The men
of experiment are," says he, "like ants,--they only collect and
use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their
own substance. But the bee takes a middle course; it gathers the
material from the flowers, but digests it by a power of its own. . . .
So true philosophy neither chiefly relies on the powers of the
mind, nor takes the matter which it gathers and lays it up in the
memory, whole as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding,
to be transformed and digested." Here he simply points out the
laws by which true knowledge is to be attained. He does not extol
physical science alone, though doubtless he had a preference for it
over metaphysical inquiries. He was an Englishman, and the English
mind is objective rather than subjective, and is prone to over-
value the outward and the seen, above the inward and unseen; and
perhaps for the same reason that the Old Testament seems to make
prosperity the greatest blessing, while adversity seems to be the
blessing of the New Testament.
One of Bacon's longest works is the "Silva Sylvarum,"--a sort of
natural history, in which he treats of the various forces and
productions of Nature,--the air the sea, the winds, the clouds,
plants and animals, fire and water, sounds and discords, colors and
smells, heat and cold, disease and health; but which varied
subjects he presents to communicate knowledge, with no especial
utilitarian end.
"The Advancement of Learning" is one of Bacon's most famous
productions, but I fail to see in it an objective purpose to
enable men to become powerful or rich or comfortable; it is
rather an abstract treatise, as dry to most people as legal
disquisitions, and with no more reference to rising in the world
than "Blackstone's Commentaries" or "Coke upon Littleton." It
is a profound dissertation on the excellence of learning; its
great divisions treating of history, poetry, and philosophy,--of
metaphysical as well as physical philosophy; of the province
of understanding, the memory, the will, the reason, and the
imagination; and of man in society,--of government, of universal
justice, of the fountains of law, of revealed religion.
And if we turn from the new method by which he would advance all
knowledge, and on which his fame as a philosopher chiefly rests,--
that method which has led to discoveries that even Bacon never
dreamed of, not thinking of the fruit he was to bestow, but only
the way to secure it,--even as a great inventor thinks more of his
invention than of the money he himself may reap from it, as a work
of creation to benefit the world rather than his own family, and in
the work of which his mind revels in a sort of intoxicated delight,
like a true poet when he constructs his lines, or a great artist
when he paints his picture,--a pure subjective joy, not an
anticipated gain;--if we turn from this "method" to most of his
other writings, what do we find? Simply the lucubrations of a man
of letters, the moral wisdom of the moralist, the historian, the
biographer, the essayist. In these writings we discover no more
worldliness than in Macaulay when he wrote his "Milton," or Carlyle
when he penned his "Burns,"--even less, for Bacon did not write to
gain a living, but to please himself and give vent to his burning
thoughts. In these he had no worldly aim to reach, except perhaps
an imperishable fame. He wrote as Michael Angelo sculptured his
Moses; and he wrote not merely amid the cares and duties of a great
public office, with other labors which might be called Herculean,
but even amid pains of disease and the infirmities of age,--when
rest, to most people, is the greatest boon and solace of their
lives.
Take his Essays,--these are among his best-known works,--so
brilliant and forcible, suggestive and rich, that even Archbishop
Whately's commentaries upon them are scarcely an addition. Surely
these are not on material subjects, and indicate anything but a
worldly or sordid nature. In these famous Essays, so luminous with
the gems of genius, we read not such worldly-wise exhortations as
Lord Chesterfield impressed upon his son, not the gossiping
frivolities of Horace Walpole, not the cynical wit of Montaigne,
but those great certitudes which console in affliction, which
kindle hope, which inspire lofty resolutions,--anchors of the soul,
pillars of faith, sources of immeasurable joy, the glorious ideals
of true objects of desire, the eternal unities of truth and love
and beauty; all of which reveal the varied experiences of life and
the riches of deeply-pondered meditation on God and Christianity,
as well as knowledge of the world and the desirableness of its
valued gifts. How beautiful are his thoughts on death, on
adversity, on glory, on anger, on friendship, on fame, on ambition,
on envy, on riches, on youth and old age, and divers other subjects
of moral import, which show the elevation of his soul, and the
subjective as well as the objective turn of his mind; not dwelling
on what he should eat and what he should drink and wherewithal he
should be clothed, but on the truths which appeal to our higher
nature, and which raise the thoughts of men from earth to heaven,
or at least to the realms of intellectual life and joy.
And then, it is necessary that we should take in view other labors
which dignified Bacon's retirement, as well as those which marked
his more active career as a lawyer and statesman,--his histories
and biographies, as well as learned treatises to improve the laws
of England; his political discourses, his judicial charges, his
theological tracts, his speeches and letters and prayers; all of
which had relation to benefit others rather than himself. Who has
ever done more to instruct the world,--to enable men to rise not in
fortune merely, but in virtue and patriotism, in those things which
are of themselves the only reward? We should consider these
labors, as well as the new method he taught to arrive at knowledge,
in our estimate of the sage as well as of the man. He was a moral
philosopher, like Socrates. He even soared into the realm of
supposititious truth, like Plato. He observed Nature, like
Aristotle. He took away the syllogism from Thomas Aquinas,--not to
throw contempt on metaphysical inquiry or dialectical reasoning,
but to arrive by a better method at the knowledge of first
principles; which once established, he allowed deductions to be
drawn from them, leading to other truths as certainly as induction
itself. Yea, he was also a Moses on the mount of Pisgah, from
which with prophetic eye he could survey the promised land of
indefinite wealth and boundless material prosperity, which
he was not permitted to enter, but which he had bequeathed to
civilization. This may have been his greatest gift in the view of
scientific men,--this inductive process of reasoning, by which
great discoveries have been made after he was dead. But this was
not his only legacy, for other things which he taught were as
valuable, not merely in his sight, but to the eye of enlightened
reason. There are other truths besides those of physical science;
there is greatness in deduction as well as in induction. Geometry--
whose successive and progressive revelations are so inspiring, and
which have come down to us from a remote antiquity, which are even
now taught in our modern schools as Euclid demonstrated them, since
they cannot be improved--is a purely deductive science. The
scholastic philosophy, even if it was barren and unfruitful in
leading to new truths, yet confirmed what was valuable in the old
systems, and by the severity of its logic and its dialectical
subtleties trained the European mind for the reception of the
message of Luther and Bacon; and this was based on deductions,
never wrong unless the premises are unsound. Theology is deductive
reasoning from truths assumed to be fundamental, and is inductive
only so far as it collates Scripture declarations, and interprets
their meaning by the aid which learning brings. Is not this
science worthy of some regard? Will it not live when all the
speculations of evolutionists are forgotten, and occupy the
thoughts of the greatest and profoundest minds so long as anything
shall be studied, so long as the Bible shall be the guide of life?
Is it not by deduction that we ascend from Nature herself to the
God of Nature? What is more certain than deduction when the
principles from which it reasons are indisputably established?
Is induction, great as it is, especially in the explorations of
Nature and science, always certain? Are not most of the sciences
which are based upon it progressive? Have we yet learned the
ultimate principles of political economy, or of geology, or of
government, or even of art? The theory of induction, though
supposed by Dr. Whewell to lead to certain results, is regarded by
Professor Jevons as leading to results only "almost certain." "All
inductive inference is merely probable," says the present professor
of logic, Thomas Fowler, in the University of Oxford.