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, of 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
School-men, "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 disputations. 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 the
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.