Beacon Lights of History Volume Vi Part 10

In regard to Ess.e.x, n.o.body can approve of the ingrat.i.tude which Bacon showed to his n.o.ble patron. But, on the other hand, remember the good advice which Bacon ever gave him, and his constant efforts to keep him out of sc.r.a.pes. How often did he excuse him to his royal mistress, at the risk of incurring her displeasure? And when Ess.e.x was guilty of a thousand times worse crime than ever Bacon committed,--even high-treason, in a time of tumult and insurrection,--and it became Bacon's task as prosecuting officer of the Crown to bring this great culprit to justice, was he required by a former friendship to sacrifice his duty and his allegiance to his sovereign, to screen a man who had perverted the affection of the n.o.blest woman who ever wore a crown, and came near involving his country in a civil war? Grant that Ess.e.x had bestowed favors, and was an accomplished and interesting man,--was Bacon to ignore his official duties? He may have been too harsh in his procedure; but in that age all criminal proceedings were harsh and inexorable,--there was but little mercy shown to culprits, especially to traitors. If Elizabeth could bring herself, out of respect to her wounded honor and slighted kindness and the dignity of the realm and the majesty of the law, to surrender into the hands of justice one whom she so tenderly loved and magnificently rewarded, even when the sacrifice cost her both peace and life, snapped the last cord which bound her to this world,--may we not forgive Bacon for the part he played? Does this fidelity to an official and professional duty, even if he were harsh, make him "the meanest of mankind"?

In regard to Peacham, it is true he was tortured, according to the practice of that cruel age; but Bacon had no hand in the issuing of the warrant against him for high-treason, although in accordance with custom he, as prosecuting officer of the Crown, examined Peacham under torture before his trial. The parson was convicted; but the sentence of death was not executed upon him, and he died in jail.

And in regard to corruption,--the sin which cast Bacon from his high estate, though fortunately he did not fall like Lucifer, never to rise again,--may not the verdict of the poet and the historian be rather exaggerated? n.o.body has ever attempted to acquit Bacon for taking bribes. n.o.body has ever excused him. He did commit a crime; but in palliation it might be said that he never decided against justice, and that it was customary for great public functionaries to accept presents.

Had he taken them after he had rendered judgment instead of before, he might have been acquitted; for out of the seven thousand cases which he decided as Lord-Chancellor, not one of them has been reversed: so that he said of himself, "I was the justest judge that England has had for fifty years; and I suffered the justest sentence that had been inflicted for two hundred years." He did not excuse himself. His ingenuousness of confession astonished everybody, and moved the hearts of his judges. It was his misfortune to be in debt; he had pressing creditors; and in two cases he accepted presents before the decision was made, but was brave enough to decide against those who bribed him,--_hinc illoe lacrymoe_. A modern corrupt official generally covers his tracks; and many a modern judge has been bribed to decide against justice, and has escaped ignominy, even in a country which claims the greatest purity and the loftiest moral standard. We admit that Bacon was a sinner; but was he a sinner above all others who cast stones at Jerusalem?

In reference to these admitted defects and crimes, I only wish to show that even these do not make him "the meanest of mankind." What crimes have sullied many of those benefactors whom all ages will admire and honor, and whom, in spite of their defects, we call good men,--not bad men to be forgiven for their services, but excellent and righteous on the whole! See Abraham telling lies to the King of Egypt; and Jacob robbing his brother of his birthright; and David murdering his bravest soldier to screen himself from adultery; and Solomon selling himself to false idols to please the wicked women who ensnared him; and Peter denying his Master; and Marcus Aurelius persecuting the Christians; and Constantine putting to death his own son; and Theodosius slaughtering the citizens of Thessalonica; and Isabella establishing the Inquisition; and Sir Mathew Hale burning witches; and Cromwell stealing a sceptre; and Calvin murdering Servetus; and Queen Elizabeth lying and cheating and swearing in the midst of her patriotic labors for her country and civilization. Even the sun pa.s.ses through eclipses. Have the spots upon the career of Bacon hidden the brightness of his general beneficence? Is he the meanest of men because he had great faults? When we speak of mean men, it is those whose general character is contemptible.

Now, see Bacon pursuing his honorable career amid rebuffs and enmities and jealousies, toiling in Herculean tasks without complaint, and waiting his time; always accessible, affable, gentle, with no vulgar pride, if he aped vulgar ostentation; calm, beneficent, studious, without envy or bitterness; interesting in his home, courted as a friend, admired as a philosopher, generous to the poor, kind to the servants who cheated him, with an unsubdued love of Nature as well as of books; not negligent of religious duties, a believer in G.o.d and immortality; and though broken in spirit, like a bruised reed, yet soaring beyond all his misfortunes to study the highest problems, and bequeathing his knowledge for the benefit of future ages! Can such a man be stigmatized as "the meanest of mankind"? Is it candid and just for a great historian to indorse such a verdict, to gloss over Bacon's virtues, and make like an advocate at the bar, or an ancient sophist, a special plea to magnify his defects, and stain his n.o.ble name with an infamy as deep as would be inflicted upon an enemy of the human race?

And all for what?--just to make a rhetorical point, and show the writer's brilliancy and genius in making a telling contrast between the man and the philosopher. A man who habitually dwelt in the highest regions of thought during his whole life, absorbed in lofty contemplations, all from love of truth itself and to benefit the world, could not have had a mean or sordid soul. "As a man thinketh, so is he."

We admit that he was a man of the world, politic, self-seeking, extravagant, careless about his debts and how he raised money to pay them; but we deny that he was a bad judge on the whole, or was unpatriotic, or immoral in his private life, or mean in his ordinary dealings, or more cruel and harsh in his judicial transactions than most of the public functionaries of his rough and venal age. We admit it is difficult to controvert the charges which Macaulay arrays against him, for so accurate and painstaking an historian is not likely to be wrong in his facts; but we believe that they are uncandidly stated, and so ingeniously and sophistically put as to give on the whole a wrong impression of the man,--making him out worse than he was, considering his age and circ.u.mstances. Bacon's character, like that of most great men, has two sides; and while we are compelled painfully to admit that he had many faults, we shrink from cla.s.sing him among bad men, as is implied in Pope's characterization of him as "the meanest of mankind."

We now take leave of the man, to consider his legacy to the world. 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 Middles.e.x is worth more than a princ.i.p.ality 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, ca.n.a.ls, 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 n.o.ble intellectual exercise, but as a handmaid to natural philosophy. Astronomy is not to a.s.sist the mind to lofty contemplation, but to enable mariners to verify degrees of lat.i.tude 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 h.e.l.l, or abstract inquiries, or divine cert.i.tudes, 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 cert.i.tudes 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 const.i.tute 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 cla.s.sify 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 _h.o.m.oousian_ and the _h.o.m.oiousian_ 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 n.o.ble inquiries after G.o.d 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 antic.i.p.ations 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 surpa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sumed to be true, and reasoning was made from this a.s.sumption. No especial fault was found with the reasoning of the great masters of logic like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, for it never has been surpa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sumptions; if the a.s.sumptions were wrong, no ingenious or elaborate reasoning would avail anything towards the discovery of truth, but could only uphold what was a.s.sumed. 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sumptions were made; if these a.s.sumptions cannot be a.s.sailed, if they are cert.i.tudes,--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 a.s.sumptions 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 compa.s.s, 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 p.r.o.ne 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 "c.o.ke 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 cert.i.tudes 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 G.o.d 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 supposit.i.tious 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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.d 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.

And although it is supposed that the inductive method of Bacon has led to the n.o.blest discoveries of modern times, is this strictly true?

Galileo made his discoveries in the heavens before Bacon died. Physical improvements must need follow such inventions as gunpowder and the mariners' compa.s.s, and printing and the pictures of Italy, and the discovery of mines and the revived arts of the Romans and Greeks, and the glorious emanc.i.p.ation which the Reformation produced. Why should not the modern races follow in the track of Carthage and Alexandria and Rome, with the progress of wealth, and carry out inventions as those cities did, and all other civilized peoples since Babal towered above the plains of Babylon? Physical developments arise from the developments of man, whatever method may be recommended by philosophers. What philosophical teachings led to the machinery of the mines of California, or to that of the mills of Lowell? Some think that our modern improvements would have come whether Bacon had lived or not. But I would not disparage the labors of Bacon in pointing out the method which leads to scientific discoveries. Granting that he sought merely utility, an improvement in the outward condition of society, which is the view that Macaulay takes, I would not underrate his legacy. And even supposing that the blessings of material life--"the acre of Middles.e.x"--are as much to be desired as Macaulay, with the complacency of an eminently practical and prosperous man, seems to argue, I would not sneer at them. Who does not value them? Who will not value them so long as our mortal bodies are to be cared for? It is a pleasant thing to ride in "cars without horses," to feel in winter the genial warmth of grates and furnaces, to receive messages from distant friends in a moment of time, to cross the ocean without discomfort, with the "almost certainty" of safety, and save our wives and daughters from the ancient drudgeries of the loom and the knitting-needle. Who ever tires in gazing at a locomotive as it whirls along with the power of destiny? Who is not astonished at the triumphs of the engineer, the wonders of an ocean-steamer, the marvellous tunnels under lofty mountains? We feel that t.i.tans have been sent to ease us of our burdens.

But great and beneficent as are these blessings, they are not the only cert.i.tudes, nor are they the greatest. An outward life of ease and comfort is not the chief end of man. The interests of the soul are more important than any comforts of the body. The higher life is only reached by lofty contemplation on the true, the beautiful, and the good.

Subjective wisdom is worth more than objective knowledge. What are the great realities,--machinery, new breeds of horses, carpets, diamonds, mirrors, gas? or are they affections, friendships, generous impulses, inspiring thoughts? Look to Socrates: what raised that barefooted, ugly-looking, impecunious, persecuted, cross-questioning, self-const.i.tuted teacher, without pay, to the loftiest pedestal of Athenian fame? What was the spirit of the truths _he_ taught? Was it objective or subjective truth; the way to become rich and comfortable, or the search for the indefinite, the infinite, the eternal,--Utopia, not Middles.e.x,--that which fed the wants of the immaterial soul, and enabled it to rise above temptation and vulgar rewards? What raised Plato to the highest pinnacle of intellectual life? Was it definite and practical knowledge of outward phenomena; or was it "a longing after love, in the contemplation of which the mortal soul sustains itself, and becomes partic.i.p.ant in the glories of immortality"? What were realities to Anselm, Bernard, and Bonaventura? What gave beauty and placidity to Descartes and Leibnitz and Kant? It may be very dignified for a modern savant to sit serenely on his tower of observation, indifferent to all the lofty speculations of the great men of bygone ages; yet those profound questions pertaining to the [Greek: logos] and the [Greek: ta onta], which had such attractions for Augustine and Pascal and Calvin, did have as real bearing on human life and on what is best worth knowing, as the scales of a leuciscus cephalus or the limbs of a magnified animalculus, or any of the facts of which physical science can boast. The wonders of science are great, but so also are the secrets of the soul, the mysteries of the spiritual life, the truths which come from divine revelation. Whatever most dignifies humanity, and makes our labors sweet, and causes us to forget our pains, and kindles us to lofty contemplations, and prompts us to heroic sacrifice, is the most real and the most useful. Even the leaves of a barren and neglected philosophy may be in some important respects of more value than all the boasted fruit of utilitarian science. Is that which is most useful always the most valuable,--that, I mean, which gives the highest pleasure? Do we not plant our grounds with the acacia, the oak, the cedar, the elm, as well as with the apple, the pear, and the cherry? Are not flowers and shrubs which beautify the lawn as desirable as beans and turnips and cabbages? Is not the rose or tulip as great an addition to even a poor man's cottage as his bed of onions or patch of potatoes? What is the scale to measure even mortal happiness? What is the marketable value of friendship or of love? What makes the dinner of herbs sometimes more refreshing than the stalled ox? What is the material profit of a first love? What is the value in tangible dollars and cents of a beautiful landscape, or a speaking picture, or a marble statue, or a living book, or the voice of eloquence, or the charm of earliest bird, or the smile of a friend, or the promise of immortality? In what consisted the real glory of the country we are never weary of quoting,--the land of Phidias and Pericles and Demosthenes? Was it not in immaterial ideas, in patriotism, in heroism, in conceptions of ideal beauty, in speculations on the infinite and unattainable, in the songs which still inspire the minds of youth, in the expression which made marble live, in those conceptions of beauty and harmony which still give shape to the temples of Christendom? Was Rome more glorious with her fine roads and tables of thuja-root, and Falernian wines, and oysters from the Lucrine Lake, and chariots of silver, and robes of purple and rings of gold,--these useful blessings which are the pride of an Epicurean civilization? And who gave the last support, who raised the last barrier, against that inundation of destructive pleasures in which some see the most valued fruits of human invention, but which proved a canker that prepared the way to ruin? It was that pious Emperor who learned his wisdom from a slave, and who set a haughty defiance to all the grandeur and all the comforts of the highest position which earth could give, and spent his leisure hours in the quiet study of those truths which elevate the soul,--truths not taught by science or nature, but by communication with invisible powers.

Ah, what indeed is reality; what is the higher good; what is that which perishes never; what is that which a.s.similates man to Deity? Is it houses, is it lands, is it gold and silver, is it luxurious couches, is it the practical utilitarian comforts that pamper this mortal body in its brief existence? or is it women's loves and patriots' struggles, and sages' pious thoughts, affections, n.o.ble aspirations, Bethanies, the serenities of virtuous old age, the harmonies of unpolluted homes, the existence of art, of truth, of love; the hopes which last when sun and stars decay? Tell us, ye women, what are realities to you,--your carpets, your plate, your jewels, your luxurious banquets; or your husbands' love, your friends' esteem, your children's reverence? And ye, toiling men of business, what is really your highest joy,--your piles of gold, your marble palaces; or the pleasures of your homes, the approbation of your consciences, your hopes of future bliss? Yes, you are dreamers, like poets and philosophers, when you call yourselves pack-horses. Even you are only sustained in labor by intangible rewards that you can neither see nor feel. The most practical of men and women can really only live in those ideas which are deemed indefinite and unreal. For what do the busiest of you run away from money-making, and ride in cold or heat, in dreariness or discomfort,--dinners, or greetings of love and sympathy? On what are such festivals as Christmas and Thanksgiving Day based?--on consecrated sentiments that have more force than any material gains or ends. These, after all, are realities to you as much as ideas were to Plato, or music to Beethoven, or patriotism to Washington. Deny these as the higher cert.i.tudes, and you rob the soul of its dignity, and life of its consolations.

AUTHORITIES.

Bacon's Works, edited by Basil Montagu; Bacon's Life, by Basil Montagu; Bacon's Life, by James Spedding; Bacon's Life, by Thomas Fowler; Dr.

Abbott's Introduction to Bacon's Essays, in Contemporary Review, 1876; Macaulay's famous essay in Edinburgh Review, 1839; Archbishop Whately's annotations of the Essays of Bacon; the general Histories of England.

GALILEO.

A.D. 1564-1642.

ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.

Among the wonders of the sixteenth century was the appearance of a new star in the northern horizon, which, shining at first with a feeble light, gradually surpa.s.sed the brightness of the planet Jupiter; and then changing its color from white to yellow and from yellow to red, after seventeen months, faded away from the sight, and has not since appeared. This celebrated star, first seen by Tycho Brahe in the constellation Ca.s.siopeia, never changed its position, or presented the slightest perceptible parallax. It could not therefore have been a meteor, nor a planet regularly revolving round the sun, nor a comet blazing with fiery nebulous light, nor a satellite of one of the planets, but a fixed star, far beyond our solar system. Such a phenomenon created an immense sensation, and has never since been satisfactorily explained by philosophers. In the infancy of astronomical science it was regarded by astrologers as a sign to portend the birth of an extraordinary individual.

Though the birth of some great political character was supposed to be heralded by this mysterious star, its prophetic meaning might with more propriety apply to the extraordinary man who astonished his contemporaries by discoveries in the heavens, and who forms the subject of this lecture; or it poetically might apply to the brilliancy of the century itself in which it appeared. The sixteenth century cannot be compared with the nineteenth century in the variety and scope of scientific discoveries; but, compared with the ages which had preceded it, it was a memorable epoch, marked by the simultaneous breaking up of the darkness of mediaeval Europe, and the bursting forth of new energies in all departments of human thought and action. In that century arose great artists, poets, philosophers, theologians, reformers, navigators, jurists, statesmen, whose genius has scarcely since been surpa.s.sed. In Italy it was marked by the triumphs of scholars and artists; in Germany and France, by reformers and warriors; in England, by that splendid constellation that shed glory on the reign of Elizabeth. Close upon the artists who followed Da Vinci, to Salvator Rosa, were those scholars of whom Emanuel Chrysoloras, Erasmus, and Scaliger were the representatives,--going back to the cla.s.sic fountains of Greece and Rome, reviving a study for antiquity, breathing a new spirit into universities, enriching vernacular tongues, collecting and collating ma.n.u.scripts, translating the Scriptures, and stimulating the learned to emanc.i.p.ate themselves from the trammels of the scholastic philosophers.

Then rose up the reformers, headed by Luther, consigning to destruction the emblems and ceremonies of mediaeval superst.i.tion, defying popes, burning bulls, ridiculing monks, exposing frauds, unravelling sophistries, attacking vices and traditions with the new arms of reason, and a.s.serting before councils and dignitaries the right of private judgment and the supreme authority of the Bible in all matters of religious faith.

And then appeared the defenders of their cause, by force of arms maintaining the great rights of religious liberty in France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and England, until Protestantism was established in half of the countries that had for more than a thousand years servilely bowed down to the authority of the popes. Genius stimulates and enterprise multiplies all the energies and aims of emanc.i.p.ated millions. Before the close of the sixteenth century new continents are colonized, new modes of warfare are introduced, ma.n.u.scripts are changed into printed books, the comforts of life are increased, governments are more firmly established, and learned men are enriched and honored.

Feudalism has succ.u.mbed to central power, and barons revolve around their sovereign at court rather than compose an independent authority.

Before that century had been numbered with the ages past, the Portuguese had sailed to the East Indies, Sir Francis Drake had circ.u.mnavigated the globe, Pizarro had conquered Peru, Sir Walter Raleigh had colonized Virginia, Ricci had penetrated to China, Lescot had planned the palace of the Louvre, Raphael had painted the Transfiguration, Michael Angelo had raised the dome of St. Peter's, Giacomo della Porta had ornamented the Vatican with mosaics, Copernicus had taught the true centre of planetary motion, Dumoulin had introduced into French jurisprudence the principles of the Justinian code, Ariosto had published the "Orlando Furioso," Cervantes had written "Don Quixote," Spenser had dedicated his "Fairy Queen," Shakspeare had composed his immortal dramas, Hooker had devised his "Ecclesiastical Polity," Cranmer had published his Forty-two Articles, John Calvin had dedicated to Francis I. his celebrated "Inst.i.tutes," Luther had translated the Bible, Bacon had begun the "Instauration of Philosophy,"

Bellarmine had systematized the Roman Catholic theology, Henry IV. had signed the Edict of Nantes, Queen Elizabeth had defeated the Invincible Armada, and William the Silent had achieved the independence of Holland.

Such were some of the lights and some of the enterprises of that great age, when the profoundest questions pertaining to philosophy, religion, law, and government were discussed with the enthusiasm and freshness of a revolutionary age; when men felt the inspiration of a new life, and looked back on the Middle Ages with disgust and hatred, as a period which enslaved the human soul. But what peculiarly marked that period was the commencement of those marvellous discoveries in science which have enriched our times and added to the material blessings of the new civilization. Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Bacon inaugurated the era which led to progressive improvements in the physical condition of society, and to those scientific marvels which have followed in such quick succession and produced such astonishing changes that we are fain to boast that we have entered upon the most fortunate and triumphant epoch in our world's history.

Many men might be taken as the representatives of this new era of science and material inventions, but I select Galileo Galilei as one of the most interesting in his life, opinions, and conflicts.

Galileo was born at Pisa, in the year 1564, the year that Calvin and Michael Angelo died, four years after the birth of Bacon, in the sixth year of the reign of Elizabeth, and the fourth of Charles IX., about the time when the Huguenot persecution was at its height, and the Spanish monarchy was in its most prosperous state, under Philip II. His parents were of a n.o.ble but impoverished Florentine family; and his father, who was a man of some learning,--a writer on the science of music,--gave him the best education he could afford. Like so many of the most ill.u.s.trious men, he early gave promise of rare abilities. It was while he was a student in the university of his native city that his attention was arrested by the vibrations of a lamp suspended from the ceiling of the cathedral; and before he had quitted the church, while the choir was chanting mediaeval anthems, he had compared those vibrations with his own pulse, which after repeated experiments, ended in the construction of the first pendulum,--applied not as it was by Huygens to the measurement of time, but to medical science, to enable physicians to ascertain the rate of the pulse. But the pendulum was soon brought into the service of the clockmakers, and ultimately to the determination of the form of the earth, by its minute irregularities in diverse lat.i.tudes, and finally to the measurement of differences of longitude by its connection with electricity and the recording of astronomical observations. Thus it was that the swinging of a cathedral lamp, before the eye of a man of genius, has done nearly as much as the telescope itself to advance science, to say nothing of its practical uses in common life.

Galileo had been destined by his father to the profession of medicine, and was ignorant of mathematics. He amused his leisure hours with painting and music, and in order to study the principles of drawing he found it necessary to acquire some knowledge of geometry, much to the annoyance of his father, who did not like to see his mind diverted from the prescriptions of Hippocrates and Galen. The certain truths of geometry burst upon him like a revelation, and after mastering Euclid he turned to Archimedes with equal enthusiasm. Mathematics now absorbed his mind, and the father was obliged to yield to the bent of his genius, which seemed to disdain the regular professions by which social position was most surely effected. He wrote about this time an essay on the Hydrostatic Balance, which introduced him to Guido Ubaldo, a famous mathematician, who induced him to investigate the subject of the centre of gravity in solid bodies. His treatise on this subject secured an introduction to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who perceived his merits, and by whom he was appointed a lecturer on mathematics at Pisa, but on the small salary of sixty crowns a year.

This was in 1589, when he was twenty-five, an enthusiastic young man, full of hope and animal spirits, the charm of every circle for his intelligence, vivacity, and wit; but bold and sarcastic, contemptuous of ancient dogmas, defiant of authority, and therefore no favorite with Jesuit priests and Dominican professors. It is said that he was a handsome man, with bright golden locks, such as painters in that age loved to perpetuate upon the canvas; hilarious and cheerful, fond of good cheer, yet a close student, obnoxious only to learned dunces and narrow pedants and treadmill professors and bigoted priests,--all of whom sought to molest him, yet to whom he was either indifferent or sarcastic, holding them and their formulas up to ridicule. He now directed his inquiries to the mechanical doctrines of Aristotle, to whose authority the schools had long bowed down, and whom he too regarded as one of the great intellectual giants of the world, yet not to be credited without sufficient reasons. Before the "Novum Organum"

was written, he sought, as Bacon himself pointed out, the way to arrive at truth,--a foundation to stand upon, a principle tested by experience, which, when established by experiment, would serve for sure deductions.

Now one of the principles a.s.sumed by Aristotle, and which had never been disputed, was, that if different weights of the same material were let fall from the same height, the heavier would reach the ground sooner than the lighter, and in proportion to the difference of weight. This a.s.sumption Galileo denied, and a.s.serted that, with the exception of a small different owing to the resistance of the air, both would fall to the ground in the same s.p.a.ce of time. To prove his position by actual experiment, he repaired to the leaning tower of Pisa, and demonstrated that he was right and Aristotle was wrong. The Aristotelians would not believe the evidence of their own senses, and ascribed the effect to some unknown cause. To such a degree were men enslaved by authority.

This provoked Galileo, and led him to attack authority with still greater vehemence, adding mockery to sarcasm; which again exasperated his opponents, and doubtless laid the foundation of that personal hostility which afterwards pursued him to the prison of the Inquisition.