Amongst his miscellaneous papers there was found after his death a
remarkable prayer, which Addison deemed sufficiently beautiful to be
published in the _Tatler_[40] for Christmas, 1710. We extract a passage
or two, that may serve to illustrate Bacon’s position or his character.
“I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all
men. If any have been my enemies, I thought not of them, neither
hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as
a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness.”
“Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in
number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to
thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea? Earth, heaven,
and all these are nothing to thy mercies.”
Addison observes of this prayer, that for elevation of thought and
greatness of expression, “it seems—rather the devotion of an angel than
a man.”
In taking leave of the life and the works of the greatest of
philosophers, and alas! the least of men, we have endeavored to present
a succinct but faithful narrative—“his glory not extenuated wherein he
was worthy, nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered” merited
obloquy with his own contemporaries and all posterity. Our endeavor has
been
Verba animi proferre et vitam impendere vero.
But his failings, great as they were, are forgotten through his
transcendent merit; his faults injured but few, and in his own time
alone; his genius has benefited all mankind. The new direction he gave
to philosophy was the indirect cause of all the modern conquests
of science over matter, or, as it were, over nature. What it has
already accomplished, and may yet effect for the whole human race, is
incalculable. Macaulay, the historian of England, has been likewise the
eloquent narrator of the progress, that owes its origin to the genius
of Francis Bacon.
“Ask a follower of Bacon,” says Macaulay, “what the new
philosophy, as it was called in the time of Charles the Second,
has effected for mankind, and his answer is ready: ‘It hath
lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; it has extinguished
diseases; it has increased the fertility of the soil; it has
given new securities to the mariner; it has furnished new arms
to the warrior; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries with
bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the
thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up
the night with the splendor of the day; it has extended the range
of the human vision; it has multiplied the power of the human
muscle; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance;
it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly
offices, all dispatch of business; it has enabled man to descend
to the depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate
securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traverse the
land on cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in
ships which sail against the wind. These are but a part of its
fruits, and of its first-fruits. For it is a philosophy which
never rests, which has never attained, which is never perfect.
Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its
goal to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow.’”[41]