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    THE WORKS OF FRANCIS BACQN . The Works qf Francis Bacon . Collected and edited by Messrs . Spedaing , Leslie Ellis , and Heath , of Trinity College , Cambridge . Vol . V ., being the second volume of the Translations of the Philosophical Wotks . Longman and Co . ^ hd filial piety of present denizens of Trinity has been fully vindicated in the progress and completion ot this Magnwai Opus . It is well that he who ,

    when still an under-graduate of his college * had ¦ conceived the plan of the Novum Orgamim , and had laid down the landmarks of future progressive improvement , should in these latter days of comment and criticism , rather than of the fertility of new growth , receive at the hands of academic descendants , breathing so heartily his own spirit of welded patience and enthusiasm , such careful exposition and such ample rendering .

    must carry the same disparagement to the Stagyrite , for he discovered , not invented , his categories and syllogism . And youths must not be taught the distinction between and the respective uses of , Barbara arid Celarent ; because they will reason in them without the teaching . And because a child says to his playfellow , " Do you love me ? " he requires not to be taught the grammar rule which lie imitatively practises . Every time a man anticipated cold by putting on an additional garment , or a child recoiled from fire because he had been burned , he proved himself an inductive philosopher . And what more was Bacon ? He didn't invent induction !

    Bacon invented or discovered induction no more than Aristotle did deduction . Both were made when man was made . But they expounded , systematised , and regulated the methods of acquiring knowledge respectively identified with their names . What the categories and syllogism and general logical rules of the one did for deduction , Bacon ' s twenty-eight instantits did for induction . The logic of Aristotle did for abstract inquiry what the second book" of the Nomtni Ort / anu-m did for practical research and the application of its results to human use and advantage . Bacon required proof before

    belief . He refused to take either principles or facts upon trust . And it was Bacon ' s formula that the learner adopted—leading him ultimately to new fields of discovery , or enabling him by means of the New System to stand fast by old truths , or to reject them as not resting on a sound or sufficient basis . Bacon not only inculcated the necessity of consulting experience and devising experiment ; but he showed under what necessary and immutable conditions experience can be rightly read , and experiment properly deduced from .

    But tins is Bacon ' s smallest merit ; that chiefly consisted , not in his teaching the means of inquiry , but in showing that the journey along his road would lead to a happy goal . Like Bunyan ' s Ev . angelist , he not only gives to his pilgrim a chart and guide for the way , but takes him to the summit of the Delectable Mountain of Promise , and points him to the shining battlements of the Celestial City to which he is to . fight his way . He gives his

    disciple not only" the Novum Organum as a weapon , but in the " New Atlantis "he shows him the certainty of victory ^ He awakes hope while he enkindles energy . He shows him that he must toil along the dusty earth ; but he convinces him that the toil some journey is the alone condition of the fruition of success . All Bacon ' s p hilosophy was a contradiction of the sombre , necessitarian dogma ,

    Ad vietum quce flagitat usus Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata . The means only he said were prepared , and he encouraged men to their use . Wo may startle pedants dv out audacity , but we believe it by no means difficult to show that ancient philosophy had no eye to the progressive development of general humanity . Goethe , the most pagan of tfio moderns , a very Olympian deity , m coldest , though purest and most lambent marble , has said , " The end of study is not knowledge , but culture . " This we believe to be axiomatically true of man the individual . But if man only gains knowledge that he himself may gain higher culture , each

    generation must begin where the last did . To effect this , nature must be reorganised . The father . must transmit his knowledge , as the instrument of his son ' s culture and the minister of his comfort , just , as really as ho must transmit to him his Hfe ' s blood . This Bacon clearly saw , and accordingly ho drew men ' s errant minds from the questions of the schools , good in their own plaoe , and directed them to the necessities of life . He enticed disciples from the Portico and the Garden , and carried them to the workshops of men and the wondrous laboratories of God . His aim , at once the noblost and the humblest , was " illustrare commoda vita ? . " "It is impossible , " he says , " to advanoe with any profit in the race , urlinn i \\ n rsrwinf in \\ n nftniiiorl 1 H nnf . fllHt . innll V flft .

    tqrmined . In soienoo , the true onrl is to onrioh human life with now disoovorios and wealth . " Many a fair flower did Sooratoa and Seneca pluck , ana they shed their perfumes ovor tho minds of mon . But Baoon ' tf avowed end , was tho culling and treasuring of " fruit . " We are defending Bacon with Jus own woapons . His own reiterated words prove a thorough consciousness of his position . While he stales his ond to bo , " commodia Uumanis insorvire , " and "

    effioa-The volume before us , entirely composed of new translations of the philosophical works , . gives us , in Bnglishi all tliat was wanting to eomple the Instau-< ratio Magna , and also the several kindred treatises mot explicitly- included in its plan , but each fitting into its own place . There are the last three books of the De Augmeniis , and the various tractates on Natural and Experimental History . One such , work , its enterprise so hazardous , its necessary labours so great , is a standing protest against the calumny of 4 R 3 UIU , that '' parlour libraries" and " readable books "

    liave frittered away the taste of the age , and , to use the witty taunt applied by Dr . Johnson to Scotland , liave secured to every man a mouthful , but to none ^ bellyful , of learning . It were unfair to content ourselves with recording the meed of praise due to the editors for assiduity and accuracy , and to forget $ h . e gratitude which the public owe to the Messrs . Longman , and the other fourteen publishing firms mrhose names are associated together on the titlepage , for their share of the enterprise , without which these five handsome and bulky tomes would

    aiot have lain on our tables . It may seem that to reviewers the critical treattnent of the yearly litter of new volumes is more welcome than the renewed survey of old books . But your well-thumbed , perhaps tear-stained ; , "Shakspeare or Bums , on the shelf nearest your hand when in your study-chair , comes fresher and jceally newer to you than the last novel from jBentley or * Quarterly" from Albemarle-styeet All gPod writers become new as they become old . It is better to grasp the oft-held hand of a friend

    than stiffly to bow to an acquaintance . Bacon has « , -wider and deeper sway in every cultivated home and head in England than when Addison wrote of him in the Spectator , or when , in the childhood of reviewing , Kenrick and Smollett told their readers in the 'Critical and , the Monthly , what was the quality of Doclsleyand ,. ^ acpb ftpnson ' s , Jiterary . warqs , , It is twenty-seven years since Ba < Spn last appeared before us in his unaiminished proportions , rcintroduced 4 > y Basil Montagu . No applpgy is required fora few more words on so rich a theme ,

    Each one df us reaps tho benefit of what Bacon < wrpte , every time we journey by rail , or speak and listen along a thousand miles of wire . But few understand exactly what he did say and do . ** Many / ' Sir William Hamilton used to say , " wear JJacou ' s livery who were never in his service . " Ho lias paid the penalty of greatness . Now , ho has been bespattered with , ignorant and indisoriminating T raieeiw ! k . gain 3 Wa . wiseaoroJI » as-eijouncQd ? . tUe ^ diot , ViPi

    that he only taught what every child had been practising since Paradise , One class have said tliafe lie was chronplpgioally the first philosopher . Another have problajtmod that lie was the mere explainer and grammarian Of praotioe whiph must by ats natm-e be Universal , To tho former it would be enough to say that Bacon himself reiterates his flfe ^ rpjeence for thos e whom t | hoy destroy to make 1 : 99 m , for his throne . To the latter an easy and evei'lftsting dilemma ia equally applioablo . They

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    eiter operari ad sublevanda vitae humante incornmoda , " with no affectation of modesty ( the most despicable of vanities ) he : just as plainly says , " Finis scientiarum a nemine adliuc positus est . " There was no unsupported assumption here . Only grant that Bacon dm regard the right end , and you cannot . deny that it has not been kept in view by philosophers before . Seneca ( and he only expresses the general voice of the ancient and mediaeval

    schools ) says , " Non est ( philosophia ) , inquam , lnstrumentorum ad usus necessarios Opifex . " Seneca advocated , the study of natural philosophy , with a strong reservation , not for its own sake , but as a means of clearing the e 3 * e which should be calmly fixed upon the mysteries of the universe . Bacon just reversed this . He advised the stud y of abstract science , in order to the attainment of results which would increase the comforts of mankind .

    Plato advocated the study of arithmetic , as a means to the understanding of the recondite properties of numbers , and so to lift . the mind from sublunary objects . Bacon advocated the study of arithmetic , in order that men might count and calculate . An old philosopher said that philosophy was the " science of causes . " So , too , said Bacon , but in a different sense . The one advocated the discovery of the causes of existing p henomena . That end once gained , and gain it no one ever did , his work was Tiypothetically done . Bacon advocated the beating about for known effects , which should serve as adequate causes , when guided and controlled by invention and sagacity , of greater and unknown results . The world had been told , that

    philosophy , was the " medicina vitse . " But the exposition of that was that we were to be medicated by the flimsy pretence of iiot feeling life ' s stings . Bacon ' s " medicina vita ; " was to put oil your glove and pull the stings of your assailants out . The one taught to suffer , the other to repel , but to suffer with greater patience than placid Stoic was capable of , till you had hit upon the means to gain your end . For you will always suffer with least impatience if you believe a way of relief is yet to be found , though you have not hit upon it . . If this was Bacon ' s relation to his past , what has it been to his future — our past . He reunited in welcome wedlock the divorced spouses Work and Thought . He led the philosopher as a student to the bench of the mechanic , and showed

    the mechanic that the teachings of philosophy were no longer proud—nay , that he himself was an unconscious pliilosophiser . A new dignity was shed over every operative act . The boy stoker , lazy and yet quick-witted , Avho laid the foundation for the safety-valve , was , in kind , just as Baconian as Locke or Cuvier . Bacon reunited mankind—philosophy , and those on , whom philosophers hardly deigned to cast an eye . He made the empty grandeur of science practical , and ho infused into every mechanical avocation new and unimagincd glories . Were we asked to single out from philosophers since his time his true descendants , we should

    first reply that we should not look lor them among philosophers at all . If confined within this range , we should pass over Locke , and Condilkc , and Cousin , and select , using Bacon ' s test of " fruit , " such men as Combe , as representing the oluss who have walked in some one of the byways of the country which opened up to Bacon ' s Pisgali view ; and Comtc , as representing that small , easilyreckoned number who have themselves traversed his futurity , and now point out a further lund of promise , a New Atlantis . But the Watts , Stephchsons , Morses , and Smellies are his lineul offspring—the children of whom ho would bo most clad .

    ¦ Wo have said nothing of Bacon tho man . Sad is it to remember that just history must class him with those whom ho so well dcsorlbcs;— " Scicnl in tunquam augcli alaU , oupiditatibus voro lanqutim serpontes qui humi roptant . " Lprd Brougham said , thirty years ago , when tlio schoolmaster was first abroad , that ho would , have every working man iu England reading Bueun ere long , Cobbott retorted , that every imm must bo first eating baoon . In spito of tho sneer and the ¦ i \ Viif i ; £ 'ji'll ! TO'WIW 1 ^ iVSf" 41 W ^ WnirA'f 7 ? wrAli » " ^ Vrtw 1 0 WVlTsiOtt

    of Useful Knowledge published an nbridgment and oxpobitlon of tho Novum OrgauuM . Wo believe that nothing but tho judicious following of their cs .-umplo , remains to enable tho oditorei of these volumes to coinploto und oonsummato their work . Wo arc confident that Bacon ' s works , if uj » P . f ° " priato selection woro made und judioious anupUiUon givon , would bo woloomo acUUtiona to tho ahulves o \ many a humblo workor .

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    ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ , ¦ — ¦ ? — ¦ — . ¦ ' ' ¦ Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not t oalfe laws—they interpret and try toi enforce them . — ~ Edinburgh Review .

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    070 Till lElBIR ; [ No . 4 * 4 * 3 , September 1 . 8 ,. 1858 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 18, 1858, page 970, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2260/page/18/