osity, powers, the whole exertion of which is required for purposes of solid advantage. He advises arithmeticians to leave these trifles, and to employ themselves in framing convenient expressions, which may be of use in physical researches. The first effect of this great revolution was, as Bacon, despised. He speaks with scorn of the mystical arithmost justly observed, to give for a time an undue im-metic of the later Platonists; and laments the propenportance to the mere graces of style. The new breed sity of mankind to employ, on mere matters of curiof scholars, the Aschams and Buchanans, nourished with the finest compositions of the Augustan age, regarded with loathing the dry, crabbed, and barbarous diction of respondents and opponents. They were far less studious about the matter of their works than about the manner. They succeeded in reforming Latinity; but they never even aspired to effect a reform in philosophy. At this time Bacon appeared. It is altogether incorrect to say, as has often been said, that he was the first man who rose up against the Aristotelian philosophy when in the height of its power. The authority of that philosophy had, as we have shown, received a fatal blow long before he was born. Several speculators, among whom Ramus was the best known, had recently attempted to form new sects. Bacon's own expressions about the state of public opinion in the time of Luther are clear and strong: Accedebat,' says he, odium et contemptus, illis ipsis temporibus ortus erga scholasticos. And again, 'Scholasticorum doctrina despectui prorsushaberi cœpit tanquam aspera et barbara.' The part which Bacon played in this great change was the part, not of Robespierre, but of Bonaparte. When he came forward, the ancient order of things had been subverted. Some bigots still cherished with devoted loyalty the remembrance of the fallen monarchy, and exerted themselves to effect a restoration. But the majority had no such feeling. Freed, yet not knowing how to use their freedom, they pursued no determinate course, and had found no leader capable of conducting them. That leader at length arose. The philosophy which he taught was essentially new. It differed from that of the celebrated ancient teachers, not merely in method but in object. Its object was the good of mankind, in the sense in which the mass of mankind always have understood, and always will understand, the word good. 'Meditor,' said Bacon, 'instaurationem philosophiae ejusmodi quæ nihil inanis aut abstracti habeat, quæque vitæ humanæ conditiones in melius provehat.' The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of his predecessors, cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by comparing his views on some important subjects with those of Plato. We select Plato, because we conceive that he did more than any other person towards giving to the minds of speculative men that bent which they retained till they received from Bacon a new impulse in a diametrically opposite direction. The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study of arithmetic, led him to recommend also the study of mathematics. The vulgar crowd of geometricians, he says, will not understand him. They have practice always in view. They do not know that the real use of the science is to lead man to the knowledge of abstract, essential, eternal truth. Indeed, if we are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this feeling so far, that he considered geometry as degraded by being applied to any purpose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed machines of extraordinary power, on mathematical principles. Plato remonstrated with his friend; and declared that this was to degrade a noble intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit only for carpenters and wheelwrights. The office of geometry, he said, was to discipline the mind, not to minister to the base wants of the body. His interference was successful; and from that time, according to Plutarch, the science of mechanics was considered as unworthy of the attention of a philosopher. Archimedes in a later age imitated and surpassed Archytas. But even Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce anything useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations; and always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements-as trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after intense application to the higher parts of his science. The opinion of Bacon on this subject was diametrically opposed to that of the ancient philosophers. He valued geometry chiefly, if not solely, on account of those uses which to Plato appeared so base. And it is remarkable that the longer he lived the stronger this feeling became. When, in 1605, he wrote the two books on the 'Advancement of Learning,' he dwelt on the advantages which mankind derived from mixed mathematics; but he at the same time admitted, that the beneficial effect produced by mathematical study on the intellect, though a collateral advantage, was 'no less worthy than that which was principal and intended.' But it is evident that his views underwent a change. When, nearly twenty years later, he published the De Augmentis, which is the treatise on the Advancement of Learning,' greatly expanded and carefully corrected, he made important alterations in the part which related to mathematics. He condemned with severity the high pretensions of the mathematicians,'delicias et fastum mathematicorum.' Assuming the well-being of the human race to be the end of knowledge, he pronounced that mathematical science could claim no higher rank than that of an appendage, or an auxiliary to other sciences. Mathematical science, he says, is the handmaid of natural philosophy-she ought to demean herself as such--and he declares that he cannot conceive by what ill chance it has happened that she presumes to claim precedence over her mistress. He predicts,-a prediction which would have made Plato shudder,-that as more and more discoveries are made in physics, there will be more and more branches of mixed mathematics. Of that collateral advantage, the value of which, twenty years before, he rated so highly, he says not one word. This omission cannot treatise was before him. From that treatise he delibehave been the effect of mere inadvertence. His own ‡ Redargutio Philosophiarum.-- I aim to new-model Philoso-rately expunged whatever was favorable to the study phy; so that it may have no empty abstractions, and may im- of pure mathematics, and inserted several keen reflecprove the condition of mankind. It is curious to observe how differently these great men estimated the value of every kind of knowledge. Take arithmetic for example. Plato, after speaking slightly of the convenience of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary transactions of life, passes to what he considers as a far more important advantage. The study of the properties of numbers, he tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises it above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study,-not that they may be able to buy or sell,-not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essence of things.t Bacon on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge only on account of its uses with reference to that visible and tangible world which Plato so much Besides--a hatred and contempt of the schoolmen had then arisen.' The learning of the schoolmen began to be despised, as rugged and barbarous.' Plato's Republic, Book 7. ⚫ Usui et commodis hominum consulimus. tions on the ardent votaries of that study. This fact, in our opinion, admits of only one explanation. Bacon's love of those pursuits which directly tend to improve the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, become immoderate. He was afraid of using any expression which might have the effect of inducing any man of talents to employ in speculations, useful enly to the mind of the speculator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the empire of man over matter. If Bacon erred here, we must acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, like those Roman matrons who swallowed abortives in order to preserve their shapes, takes pains to be barren for fear of being homely. has put into the mouth of an ancient king of Egypt.* But it is evident from the context that they were his own; and so they were understood to be by Quinctilian. Indeed they are in perfect accordance with the whole Platonic system. Bacon's views, as may easily be supposed, were widely different. The powers of the memory, he observes, without the help of writing, can do little towards the advancement of any useful science. He acknowledges that the memory may be disciplined to such a point as to be able to perform very extraordinary feats. But on such feats he sets little value. The habits of his mind, he tells us, are such that he is not disposed to rate highly any accomplishment, however rare, which is of no practical use to mankind. As to these prodigious achievements of the memory, he ranks them with the exhibitions of rope-dancers and tumblers. The two performances,' he says, 'are of much the same sort. The one is an abuse of the powers of the body; the other is an abuse of the powers of the mind. Both may perhaps excite our wonder; but neither is entitled to our respect.' Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences which Plato exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons far removed from common habits of thinking. 'Shall we set down astronomy,' says Socrates, among the subjects of study?' I think so,' answers his young friend Glaucon: 'to know something about the seasons, about the months and the To Plato, the science of medicine appeared one of years, is of use for military purposes, as well as for very disputable advantage.§ He did not indeed object agriculture and navigation.' 'It amuses me,' says to quick cures for acute disorders, or for injuries proSocrates, to see how afraid you are lest the common duced by accidents. But the art which resists the slow herd of people should accuse you of recommending sap of a chronic disease-which repairs frames eneruseless studies. He then proceeds in that pure and vated by lust, swollen by gluttony, or inflamed by magnificent diction, which, as Cicero said, Jupiter wine-which encourages sensuality, by mitigating the would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to explain, that the natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs use of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of existence when the intellect has ceased to retain its life, but to assist in raising the mind to the contempla- entire energy--had no share of his esteem. A life protion of things which are to be perceived by the pure in-tracted by medical skill he pronounced to be a long tellect alone. The knowledge of the actual motions of death. The exercise of the art of medicine ought, he the heavenly bodies he considers as of little value. The said, to be tolerated so far as that art may serve to cure appearances which make the sky beautiful at night are, the occasional distempers of men whose constitutions he tells us, like the figures which a geometrician draws are good. As to those who have bad constitutions, let on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to feeble minds. them die ;-and the sooner the better. Such men are We must get beyond them; we must neglect them; unfit for war, for magistracy, for the management of we must attain to an astronomy which is as independent their domestic affairs. That however is comparatively of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of little consequence. But they are incapable of study of the lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we and speculation. If they engage in any severe mental imagine, very nearly, if not exactly, the astronomy which exercise, they are troubled with giddiness and fulness Bacon compared to the ox of Prometheus-a sleek, of the head; all which they lay to the account of phiwell shaped hide, stuffed with rubbish, goodly to look losophy. The best thing that can happen to such at, but containing nothing to eat. He complained that wretches is to have done with life at once. He quotes astronomy had, to its great injury, been separated from mythical authority in support of this doctrine; and natural philosophy, of which it was one of the noblest reminds his disciples that the practice of the sons of provinces, and annexed to the domain of mathematics. Esculapius, as described by Homer, extended only to The world stood in need, he said, of a very different the cure of external injuries. astronomy-of a living astronomy; of an astronomy which should set forth the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly bodies, as they really are. On the greatest and most useful of all inventions,-the invention of alphabetical writing,--Plato did not look with much complacency. He seems to have thought that the use of letters had operated on the human mind as the use of the go-cart in learning to walk, or of corks in learning to swim, is said to operate on the human body. It was a support which soon became indispensable to those who used it,-which made vigorous exertion first unnecessary, and then impossible. The powers of the intellect would, he conceived, have been more fully developed without this delusive aid. Men would have been compelled to exercise the understanding and the memory; and, by deep and assiduous meditation, to make truth thorough ly their own. Now, on the contrary, much knowledge is traced on paper, but little is engraved in the soul. A man is certain that he can find information at a moment's notice when he wants it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his mind. Such a man cannot in strictness be said to know any thing. He has the show, without the reality of wisdom. These opinions Plato Compare the passage relating to mathematics in the second book of the Advancement of Learning with the De Augmentis, Lib. 3, Cap. 6. Plato's Republic, Book 7. Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the sciences, that which he seems to have regarded with the greatest interest was the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well regulated community. To make men perfect was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make imperfect men comfortable. The beneficence of his philosophy resembled the beneficence of the common Father, whose sun rises on the evil and the good-whose rain descends for the just and the unjust. In Plato's opinion man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion philosophy was made for man; it was a means to an end ;and that end was to increase the pleasures, and to mitigate the pains of millions who are not and cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales, should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timæus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English school of wisdom altogether rejected. Bacon would not have thought it beneath the dignity of a philosopher to contrive an improved garden chair for such a valetu *Plato's Phædrus, + Quinctilian, XI. De Augmentis, Lib. 5. Cap. 5. 78 doctrine formed the minds of men to a high degree of The boast of the ancient philosophers was, that their wisdom and virtue. good which the most celebrated of those teachers even pretended to effect; and undoubtedly if they had effect. This was indeed the only practical ed this, they would have deserved the greatest praise. But the truth is, that in those very matters in which alone they professed to do any good to mankind, in those very matters for the sake of which they neglected all the vulgar interests of mankind, they did nothing, or worse than nothing. They promised what was inpracticable; they despised what was practicable; they they left it as wicked and as ignorant as they found it. filled the world with long words and long beards; and Utopia. The smallest actual good is better than the Án acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in most magnificent promises of impossibilities. The wise man of the Stoics would, no doubt, be a grander object than a steam-engine. But there are steam-engines; dinarian,—to devise some way of rendering his medicines more palatable,-to invent repasts which he might enjoy, and pillows on which he might sleep soundly; and this though there might not be the smallest hope that the mind of the poor invalid would ever rise to the contemplation of the ideal beautiful and the ideal good. As Plato had cited the religious legends of Greece to justify his contempt for the more recondite parts of the art of healing, Bacon vindicated the dignity of that art by appealing to the example of Christ; and reminded his readers that the great physician of the soul did not disdain to be also the physician of the body. When we pass from the science of medicine to that of legislation, we find the same difference between the systems of these two great men. Plato, at the commencement of the fine Dialogue on Laws, lays it down as a fundamental principle, that the end of legislation is to make men virtuous. out the extravagant conclusions to which such a pro-and the wise man of the Stoics is yet to be born. A It is unnecessary to point position leads. Bacon well knew to how great an ex- philosophy which should enable a man to feel perfectly tent the happiness of every society must depend on the happy while in agonies of pain, may be better than a virtue of its members; and he also knew what legis- philosophy which assuages pain. But we know that lators can, and what they cannot do, for the purpose of there are remedies which will assuage pain; and we promoting virtue. The view which he has given of know that the ancient sages liked the toothache just as the end of legislation and of the principal means for the little as their neighbors. A philosophy which should attainment of that end, has always seemed to us emi-extinguish cupidity, would be better than a philosophy nently happy; even among the many happy passages which should devise laws for the security of property. of the same kind with which his works abound. Finis But it is possible to make laws which shall, to a very et scopus quem leges intueri atque ad quem jussiones great extent, secure property. And we do not underet sanctiones suas dirigere debent, non alius est quam stand how any motives which the ancient philosophy ut cives feliciter degant. Id fiet si pietate et religione furnished could extinguish cupidity. We know indeed recte instituti, moribus honesti, armis adversus hostes that the philosophers were no better than other men. externos tuti, legum auxilio adversus seditiones et pri- From the testimony of friends as well as of foesvatas injurias muniti, imperio et magistratibus obse- from the confessions of Epictetus and Seneca, as well as quentes, copiis et opibus locupletes et florentes fuerint.' from the sneers of Lucian and the fierce invectives of The end is the well-being of the people. The means Juvenal, are the imparting of moral and religious education; the providing of every thing necessary for defence against foreign enemies; the maintaining of internal order; the establishing of a judicial, financial, and commercial system, under which wealth may be rapidly accumulated and securely enjoyed. the vices of their neighbors, with the additional vice of hypocrisy. Some people may think the object of is plain that these teachers of virtue had all the Baconian philosophy a low object, but they cannot deny that, high or low, it has been attained. They Had Plato lived to finish the 'Critias,' a comparison have made, and are making, great and constant progress carnot deny that every year makes an addition to what Bacon called 'fruit.' They cannot deny that mankind between that noble fiction and the 'New Atlantis,' in the road which he pointed out to them. Was there would probably have furnished us with still more stri- any such progressive movement among the ancient king instances. It is amusing to think with what hor-philosophers? After they had been declaiming eight ror he would have seen such an institution as 'Solomon's hundred years, had they made the world better than House' rising in his republic; with what vehemence he when they began? Our belief is, that among the phiwould have ordered the brewhouses, the perfume houses, losophers themselves, instead of a progressive improveand the dispensatories to be pulled down; and with ment, there was a progressive degeneracy. An abject what inexorable rigor he would have driven beyond the superstition, which Democritus or Anaxagoras would frontier all the fellows of the college, merchants of light have rejected with scorn, added the last disgrace to the and depredators, lamps and pioneers. To sum up the whole: we should say that the aim unsuccessful attempts to articulate which are so delong dotage of the Stoic and Platonic schools. Those of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.lightful and interesting in a child, shock and disgust us The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide in an aged paralytic; and in the same way, those wild man with what he requires while he continues to be mythological fictions which charm us when lisped by man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise Greek poetry in its infancy, excite a mixed sensation of us far above vulgar wants. philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former in its old age. The aim of the Baconian pity and loathing when mumbled by Greek philosophy aim was noble; but the latter was attainable. Plato glasses, clocks, are better in our time than they were drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed in the time of our fathers; and were better in the time We know that guns, cutlery, spyat the stars; and therefore, though there was no want of our fathers than they were in the time of our grandof strength or skill, the shot was thrown away. His fathers. We might, therefore, be inclined to think, arrow was indeed followed by a track of dazzling radi- that when a philosophy which boasted that its object ance, but it struck nothing. was the elevation and purification of the mind, and which for this object neglected the sordid office of ministering to the comforts of the body, had flourished in the Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on amelioration must have taken place. Was it so? Look highest honor for many hundreds of years, a vast moral the earth and within bow-shot, and hit it in the white. at the schools of this wisdom four centuries before the The philosophy of Plato began in words and ended in christian era, and four centuries after that era. Comwords,-noble words indeed,-words such as were to pare the men whom those schools formed at those two be expected from the finest of human intellects exer- periods. Compare Plato and Libanius. Compare Pericising boundless dominion over the finest of human cles and Julian. This philosophy confessed, nay boastlanguages. The philosophy of Bacon began in obser-ed, that for every end but one it was useless. Had it vations and ended in arts. 'Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo Signavitque viam flammis, tenuisque recessit Consumpta in ventos.' attained that one end? THE SHIPWRECK. Suppose that Justinian, when he closed the schools of Athens, had called on the last few sages who still haunted the portico, and lingered round the ancient plane trees, to show their title to public veneration :suppose that he had said, 'A thousand years have elapsed since, in this famous city, Socrates posed Protagoras and Hippias; during those thousand years a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation has been employed in constant efforts to bring to perfection the philosophy which you teach; that philosophy has been munificently patronised by the powerful; its professors have been held in the highest esteem by the public; it has drawn to itself almost all the sap and vigor of the human intellect-and what has it effected? What profitable truth has it taught us which we should not equally have known without it? What has it enabled us to do which we should not have been equally able to do without it?' Such questions, we suspect, would have puzzled Simplicius and Isidore. Ask a follower of Bacon 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 has length-In trust and sunshine. Inconsiderate mirth ened 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 muscles; it has accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch 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 fruit. For it is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained it, 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.' BY W. GILMORE SIMMS. There was a goodly barque, that from her home [Part 3d, and last, in our next number.] THE MOTHER FOR HER SON. BY B. W. HUNTINGTON. Oh God! the giver of all good! defender from all ill! Thy presence fills immensity--oh! dwell within his heart, I would not ask his cup exempt from time's allotted strife, Laugh'd out, and youthful maidens sang aloud, But, the fourth day And wilder grows the tempest,―louder yell Sweet woman!-and her prayers are for his strength, A terrible Spirit rides, and rules the rest, And terrible in their promptitude set out, And its green hollows gape. God keep that ship, That strain upon them? Now they bend, they break, Until they touch the clouds;-and now they fall On the black waters. Through her sides they rush, Never more Shall she thus queen it. The rebellious waves Flies shrieking with the winds,-and down she sinks, There shall be weeping for that fated barque!- Brightly the young Morn HUMAN NATURE VINDICATED. Dr. Johnson's pointed remark, that 'Whoever charges all mankind with knavery, convicts at least one,'—has been often quoted: and there can be little doubt, that it expresses his real estimate of human character. High churchman, bigot, monarchist, nay and (strongest cause of misanthropy) valetudinarian as he was,-he was not hopeless of his species. There is a testimony, entitled perhaps to still greater weight; that of his friend Savage. For the calamitous and often profligate life of Savage, both by the associates it gave him and by the turn of thought it betokened and was calculated to engender, might lead us to expect from him the very worst opinion of mankind. Yet it was far otherwise; as his biographer, Johnson, tells us in the following nervous passage-which manifests, at the same time, his own concurring opinion. "His" [Savage's] "judgment was eminently exact, with regard both to writings and to men. The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment: and it is not without some satisfaction that I can produce his suffrage in favor of Human Nature, of which he never appeared to entertain such odious ideas as some, who possess neither his judgment nor experience, have published, either in ostentation of their sagacity, in vindication of their crimes, or in gratification of their malice." [Johnson's Life of Savage, sub finem. |