Macaulay in his brilliant Essay on Lord Bacon. The greater the merits of a writer, the more important it is to point out where he is likely to mislead, and as there can be no question about the merits of Mr. Macaulay's Essay, it all the more behoves us to notice where he is in error. Mr. Macaulay has both understated and overstated the merits of Bacon's Organon. His judgment of Bacon errs both from excess and defect of praise. He has treated his hero as the heathen do their idols--sometimes bowing down to them, as if the power of the great God resided in wood and stone, and then revenging themselves on them and turning them into contempt.

In the first place, we are told that Bacon was not the inventor of a new Organon discovery. And here we should remark, that we are apt to impose on ourselves and others. Discovery and a method of discovery are different things, just as logic and reasoning, grammar and speech, are different. Bacon never pretended that he was the inventor of invention. To the merit of discovery it is enough that we make known for the first time what has existed already. We say America was discovered by Columbus, though it is certain that he was not the first to set foot there, or even to sail across the Atlantic. Mr. Macaulay says that experiment is as old as human nature, and brings forward a very laughable instance of the inductive process leading to the discovery that mince pies are unwholesome. The same fallacy imposed upon the Deists of the last century. Tindal wrote his treatise, "Christianity as old as the Creation," to prove that what was good in revealed religion was not new, and what was new was not good. The fallacy turns on the double sense of the word new in the above dilemma. Christianity is not new in the sense of foreign, i. e., abhorrent to human nature. As it was given to man, it was adapted to man. This objection of the Deists was used as an argument by the early apologists, so strangely does controversy change sides. Tertullian appealed to the testimony of the soul naturally Christian. But Christianity is new in an historical sense. all that men might have known of God and themselves-in this sense, old as the creation; but did not know

It was

in this sense, new as the time of its revelation. The well-known story of Columbus' egg is another instance of the like fallacy well refuted.

So far from Bacon pretending to be the first who observed and experimented on nature, he distinctly says that there never have been discoveries made but by following his method; the method, notwithstanding, was his own. Aristotle drew up a code of reasoning based on the syllogism. He united two ideas by declaring their identity with a third, through the medium of three propositions termed the premises and the consequence. Bacon drew up a code of reasoning on a different method. He united two ideas, not by deducing their identity from a third or common term; but by direct comparison he discovered their identity or point of common agreement. He did not, as Aristotle, assume a common term or principle, but investigated it. Phenomena agreed. with each other, i.e., came under a common law, because they were proved to do so, not because the agreement was postulated. If we can reason inductively by the syllogism, then Bacon's method is not his own-Aristotle's is the only Organum. But if we can compare solitary instances, and discern their agreement without the aid of any intervening principle (if we except the uniformity of nature, which is not so much a principle to be postulated as a law of thought we cannot transcend or dispute), then there is a logic of induction as well as a logic of deduction. The syllogism, the one instrument in the old logic, is useless in the new, except for the detection of fallacies. With a new instrument, it may be fairly allowed that a new method of proof has been invented. Bacon's prerogative instances exactly takes the place of Aristotle's analytics. His method has been compactly defined by himself as comprehending two divisions. "The first regards the cliciting or creating of axioms from experiment, the second regards the deducing or deriving of new periments from axioms." The first, or simple observation, is as old as human nature, but so far from being dignified with the name of method, philosophers were always giving cautions against the fallacy of observation. Plato's dialectics is grounded on the principle that the senses are not to be

ex

trusted; and even Aristotle, although he admitted that experience was the source from which the materials of each science were to be drawn, nevertheless refused to the intermediate axioms so derived any character of certainty. Scepticism as to the evidence of the senses was the bane of all ancient philosophy. But if simple observation was little attended to, compound observation or experiment was still less. Chemistry was unknown to the ancients, because they could not select instances and analyse as well as observe nature. The chemist's laboratory is the true microcosm of which the ancients dreamed, and this science was only in its infancy when Bacon wrote. The method of Bacon thus was his own, because the materials out of which he constructed his method were only then being discovered. If some sagacious minds had foretold the logic of induction, Bacon first announced it. Seneca may as well be preferred to Columbus as the discoverer of America, because he vaguely announced that the bounds of the ocean would be unloosed, and men sail beyond the pillars of Hercules, as Bacon be deprived of his honour as the author of a Novum Organum, because such a thing as induction was known before. Many presaged the Reformation: Luther brought it to pass. "There is nothing

new under the sun;" but this is said after the discovery by disappointed competitors, not before. The inductive logic has received immense additions since Bacon. As the addition of a new language adds new materials for a universal grammar, so each new discovery brings to light fresh instances of the inductive process. Bacon's instances of the door-the cross-conspicuous instances and constitutive irstances-would be rejected by the inductive logicians of our day. Dr. Whewell, for instance, or Mr Mill, could lay down a chart of inductive reasoning more complete than even Bacon, just as Manchester can produce better machinists than Arkwright, or Birmingham better engineers than Watt; but the loom and the engine owe more to them than to any other improver since; and so with Bacon and his followers. The disciple is not greater than his Lord, and the fame of the improver cannot eclipse that of the inventor.

Bacon's fame will therefore continue as the author of a new Organon, though we have discarded his phraseology and forgotten his prerogative instances. That Bacon knew the merit and novelty of his method is certain. In his youth he styled it the maximus partus temporis. In his old age he bequeathed his works to posterity; thus instancing at both extremes of life a conviction that none before had elaborated such a method, and that posterity should know its obligations to him.

Nil ortum, alias nil oriturum tale fatentes.

Mr. Macaulay has not given Bacon his due in this respect, and therefore, in Bacon's own phrase, we note him here deficient.

In the next place, Mr. Macaulay misjudges Bacon, from excess of praise as well as defect.

The key of the Baconian doctrine he describes as Utility and Progress. "The ancient philosophy," Mr. Macaulay adds, "disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; inexhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools contemned that office as degrading; some censured it as immoral." All this seems to us like mending one fault by making another.

How far thus is it true, that "ancient philosophy was a tread-mill, not a path;" that the "human mind instead of marching marked time;" that it "ranted about the fitness of things, the all-sufficiency of virtue, and the dignity of human nature ?" Mr. Macaulay very pleasantly inveighs against it for all these things; but does not venture to tell us the "moving why" for so much stagnation then and progress now. He forgets or overlooks that the greatest mystery to man is himself. The things within, not those without, make the first demands on our serious thought. Whence am I? Wherefore am I? Whither am I going? These questions make up the true philosophia prima of human nature.

Till these are settled in some way or other, the mind cannot set out with any satisfaction on inquiries of secondary interest. The life is more

than meat and the body than raiment. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Such a question would be a momentous one had a revelation never been given to man. Heathen men as well as Christians have learned to distinguish between the supreme good and what is good in a secondary sense. Mr. Macaulay expends a great deal of ridicule on the disciple of Epictetus, because he moralized over instead of amending the ills of life; because, for instance, instead of inventing the diving-bell and recovering the cargo, he exhorted the ruined merchant to seek happiness in things without him, and to fear poverty less and dishonour more. Can there be a doubt, notwithstanding, which of the two is the summum bonum? Were we called on to make a choice (which it is quite unnecessary to suppose), should we prefer the skill which alleviates evil or the patient spirit which conquers it by enduring The moral philosophy of the ancients may seem an empty, useless thing, if judged by the requirements of our age. With us a teacher of morals is a professor, and no more. His voice is never heard beyond the walls of his lecture-room. No one pretends that the study of ethics will now-a-days either prevent crime or procure virtue. Religion includes morality under it. The less has been taken up, and merged in the greater. The higher sanctions and more solemn warnings of a revelation from God draw men now to duty and love in a Christian land; nor do those who deny the revelation from heaven deny the duties it has taught us; the springs that move the thousand wheels of life rise in the holy hills, and flow down fast by the oracles of God, to set in motion the world beneath, that often knows not the sacred source of its new principles. But the ancients knew nothing of this. Their religion was a dead stagnant pool of the plain, not a spring of living water from heaven. Their better moralists were ashamed of it, and expressly excluded its teachers from a place in their ideal republics; ethics was therefore to them the master science, as theology (practical, we mean) is to us. Philo

sophy was required to do among a heathen people that which religion does for us to supply, for instance, motives for good and dissuasives from evil-to teach the worth of the soul and the dignity of virtue. This may be a rant, as it often is in our day. To hear, for instance, those who discard Christianity borrowing its pure precepts, and supplying new sanctions of their own-the categorical imperative, for instance, of Kant, or the sympathetic scheme of some of the Scotch school-is simple rant or cant, whatever Mr. Macaulay chooses to call it. But this is the error not of ancient but modern moral philosophy. To those without a revelation, the question of the supreme good is as necessary and lawful as to those with it, it is useless and impertinent. So far from joining in, Mr. Macaulay sneers at the unprofitableness of such questions among the heathen; we learn therefrom a different lesson-one of pity for them and thankfulness for ourselves. With our knowledge of hydraulics, aqueducts are now a use less waste of labour and skill. Water now rises to the roofs of our houses, because it springs from some higher level in the hills beyond our cities. But were there no hills, some mechanical contrivance would be necessary to raise the water in our cisterns. Ethics may be compared to the aqueducts and pumps of the ancients. It would have been better to have known the simple principle that water always rises to its own level. It would have been better if men had clean hands and a pure heart, abhorred bribes, and swore to their own hurt and disappointed not, from having the fear of God before their eyes; the high level of practice would have been attained from the high level of principle. But we cannot condemn them for what was their misfortune, not their fault. Had they our advantages, it is fair to ask, would they not have discarded their old appliances just as they would have abandoned their aqueducts had they our knowledge of hydraulics? That noble-hearted men said, in presence of the great moral mysteries which perplexed them, we will not eat and drink, because to-morrow we die, should excite a deeper feeling than derision. Mr. Macaulay seems not to understand the qualified tone of admiration with which wise men of

old spoke of mere physical discoveries. When Socrates, for instance, would restrain the ardour of Xenophon in observing the nature of the sun and stars, he asks him had he mastered all that related to human affairs of which man does possess control, that he could devote themselves to speculations so remote from practice. To Socrates the practical was mental, to Bacon physical science; and both in their own age struck the right key.

The ancients failed, we admit, to discover the supreme good: but does the search itself deserve to be compared to one of the labours of the Grecian Tartarus, "spinning for ever on the same wheel, round the same pivot, or gaping for ever after the same deluding clusters, or pouring water for ever into the same bottomless buckets?" We read a different lesson from their failure. We still prefer with them to enquire after the supreme good. We call holiness the one thing needful, as the Scripture phrase hath it, or the "master science," as Aristotle would call it; but because philosophy has not led us to the spring-head of holiness, shall we therefore reject primary philosophy altogether, and turn our thoughts only to the things of this life? We would not despair thus of truth, even if revelation had abandoned us altogether. The failure of the schools to discover the supreme good may have driven a Pilate to ask, "What is truth?" To a nobler spirit of the same age this despair of heathen moralists sounded as a voice from heaven, "Go over and help them."

We are firmly persuaded that there is no knowledge of God farther than He is pleased to reveal himself. Bacon has rightly said, "For as the power and skill of a workman are seen in his work, but not his person, so the works of God express the wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator without the least representation of his image; and in this respect the opinion of the heathens differed from the sacred verity in supposing the world to be the image of God, and man a little image of the world."

Revelation has set us free from all these perplexities of ancient thought. To us there is but one God. Theism

(to enrich our language again with the thought of Bacon) has now been seated the common parent of the

sciences, as Berecinthia, rejoicing over her celestial offspring,

Omnes cœlicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes. We can therefore interpret nature because we know what nature truly is. Induction, before the world was known to be God's work, and matter and spirit were marked off as distinct things, was impossible; it was at once too high and too mean a thing for the human mind. It was too high, because nature itself was a God. In the age of mythology it would have been thought a presumptuous thing to try experiments with nature. It is not eighty years ago-so superstitious is man still, after the true light shineth, as well as before-Franklin was deemed profane for applying lightning-conductors to churches. By "tempting God" men formerly meant tempting the god of lightning or the god of the ocean, or so on; and it is probable that the lurking objections (idola specûs) of the vulgar to novel experiments, arise from this demonolatry or belief in special demons residing in certain elements. Again, to interpret nature was too mean a thing before it was known that the earth is

Jehovah's and the fulness of it. Bacon's favourite aphorism, knowledge is power, could only proceed from a philosophy founded on theism. To observe nature we know is to command her; but this can only proceed from this that in observing we discover the laws by which God commands nature. By our knowledge we first learn his power, and then our own over nature. But the idea of power presupposes an intelligent agent above and apart from nature itself ; and thus, till we know there is such an agent, we never should think of interpreting nature, or expect to use her laws until we are sure they are the laws imposed by a mind analogous to our own, though, of course, immensely superior.

We note Mr. Macaulay as "deficient" in thus disparaging the ancients and sneering at ethics. Bacon's greatness in the region of physical discovery, as well as the unprofitableness of ancient speculation in the reign of moral, depends far more than Mr. Macaulay supposes on the knowledge of a personal God, vouchsafed to the one and withheld from the other. The sun of the whole matter, and

the key of Bacon's philosophy, seems to be this man is appointed both king and priest unto God over nature. But his kingdom depends upon his priesthood; it is not absolute; he only rules over inferior creatures, in order that as priest he may present their homage to the one Creator of all. Unfaithfulness to his priesthood must therefore deprive him of his right of kingship. Man, by his apostacy from God, has become an unfaithful priest, and so the kingdom has been taken from him. Heathenism and barbarism are thus related as cause and effect, or as crime and its consequences. Redemption, or the restoration of man to the priesthood-or access to God, his presence, and favour-will bring with it a restoration to the kingship. It thus follows that religion and science are not opposed, but parts of one and the same thing. We in our age experience the beginnings of both. Men are being Christianized and civilized together. The leaders in the two movements may not be the same, but they are related, as Aaron and Moses were brethren. Sometimes

the two interests lie apart, but they are continually approximating, and will meet at last. Bacon and his followers have asserted vigorously and successfully the rights of man as king over nature; he entitled his Novum Organum, "on the interpretation of nature and the reign of man." But until man cn govern himself, he cannot be God's vicegerent again on earth; civil restitution waits upon religious. Bacon's place may thus be ascertained as the master of nature, because the servant of God. He who reads the Novum Organum in a religious spirit will thus best catch the spirit of Bacon; and the kingdom over nature he lived to establish can only be set up on the same foundations of our priesthood unto God. As the gate of humility leads to the gate of wisdom, so the knowledge of God's laws must grow out of submission to his will; and the study of Bacon will be lost labour, though we rise up early and late take rest, unless we learn that "the fear of the Lord that is wisdom, and to depart from evil that is understanding."

SOME short time ago France was aroused by a wail of distress from one of her own most illustrious sons. Alphonse de Lamartine published the first number of a Cours Familier de Litterature, at the close of which he broke forth into the following lament:

My life, notwithstanding certain deceptive appearances, is not one that should excite envy; I will say more, it is ended: I do not live, I survive. Of all these several men who to a certain degree lived in me, the man of sentiment, the man of poetry, the speaker, the man of action, nothing more remains of me but the man of letters. The literary man himself is not happy. Years do not yet weigh upon me, yet I feel them. I support more painfully the weight of my heart than that of years. These years, like the phantoms of Macbeth, raising their hands over my shoulder, point with their finger not to crowns but a sepulchre and would to God that I already lay there. I have not within me the power to smile either at the past or the future; I am growing old without pos➡ terity in my house, empty, and all surrounded

by the tombs of those whom I have loved; ↑ stir not a step from my dwelling without striking my foot against one of those stumb ling blocks of our affections or our hopes. They are so many bleeding fibres torn from my yet living heart, and buried before me, even while this heart yet beats in my breast, like a clock forgotten in a deserted house, and which strikes the hours that no one reckons any longer! All that remains of life is con centrated in a few hearts, and in a modest inheritance. And yet these hearts are made to suffer by me, and of this inheritance I might to-morrow Le dispossessed, and obliged to go and die, according to the expression of Dante, on the high road of the stranger. The hearth where my father rested his feet, and where to-day I rest mine, may at any hour be held up to public bidding, as well as my mother's bed; aye, even to the dog, who licks my hands with pity when he sees my brow gather in agony as I look on him. I owe this acknowledgment to others, who have, on the faith of my honor and industry, confided to me the inheritance of their children earned by the sweat of their own brow. If I did not work every day for them—what do I say?-if I took even my full nights' sleep, or if illness (from which may God spare me