When we peruse these, and other marvels which he has in store, Bacon, instead of the predecessor of Newton, appears as the cozening conjurer, the associate of Friar Vandermast and Friar Bungay, the master of the merry Knave Miles. His scientific dignity vanishes, and we consider him as the ignorant hero of a barbarous tribe, destitute of any worth except a blind and puerile curiosity.

Bacon relapsed into the errors of his age, whenever he could not exercise the wisdom which taught him that experiment was the test of truth. But the mistaken judgment which he thus evinced resulted from the circumstances under which he was placed. He could not always bring the assertions of others to the test, nor wholly refuse to yield to mistaken analogies. Many tales were told in the volumes whereon he wasted his midnight oil, which he dared not disbelieve until they were disproved by experiment. Whilst the wonders propounded to him for his acceptance remained unsubjected to this trial, his readiness in receiving them, absurd as it may seem, did not result from imbecility or dullness. Phantoms surrounded him on every side, and though he held the spear of Ithuriel in his grasp, still, when the delusions floated beyond its reach, he could not avail himself of its disenchanting power.

Deeply impressed with a sense of the interminable varieties of natural energy, but with little practical knowledge of the births of distant realms, the philosopher'-we must not deny the name to him-was thus easily misled by the fallacies of his general argument. If the magnet attracted the heavy iron, why should it be deemed impossible for the ætites to exercise an equal influence over gold? The stone, if it exists, has no such power; and we are inclined to blame the ancients for the mistake: but let it be supposed that Lavoisier, placed in a situation in which he could not try the experiment, had been informed that the apposition of a certain number of plates of zinc and copper would reduce his elemental alkali from the state of an oxide into a metal, he certainly would have given as little credit to the tale as to the dreams of Albertus Magnus. We know not the cause which lights the ineffectual fire of the glow-worm. Those who contemplated the fairy light of the insect might easily believe that in eastern climes the costly carbuncle shone with greater brilliancy. Griffins, winged serpents, hippocentaurs, and all the other dire creatures acknowledged by the mythic zoography of Greece and Arabia, retained in fancy an existence equally excusable. The Philosopher did not venture to limit the plastic power of nature; and here again bis acceptance even of exaggerations and fictions might in some measure be justified. If a drawing of that straugest birth of Australasia, the Ornithorynchus paradoxus, had been presented to Lin

næus

næus without any proof of the existence of the animal, would he have failed to exclaim that such an anomalous compound was wholly irreconcileable to physiology? He would have been indignant at the attempted imposition, and would have determined on placing the uncouth monster in the same cabinet with the Griffin's claw and the Unicorn's horn, which so long adorned the Treasury of St. Denis. Time, the slow revealer of all secrets, has since enabled us to make even a further deduction from the chapter of fabulous animals, and the existence of the Unicorn is as little problematical as that of the rhinoceros.

Imperfect as the state of science may have been in the middle ages, it had yet advanced sufficiently to afford an indication of the power of knowledge. The bark was launched from the shore, and the mariners knew that the voyage must continue until the vessel reached a fairer clime; but instead of limiting their expectations to the fruits which the earth brings forth, they dreamt that they should discover the Garden of the Hesperides. Driven beyond its bounds, an undue estimation was formed of the force and tendency of every science. The Chemist would make gold; the Astronomer search out the astral characters of the book of fate; the Physician avert the lot of mortality.

and

In the earlier part of the seventeenth century the inquirer began to obtain a knowledge of the great secrets which had hitherto been concealed: the telescope was pointed at the heavens, and skilful operators took their place in the laboratory. The gross absurdities of the preceding age were therefore discarded by the learned, but at the same time, in place of these errors, they created others of their own. The first mists of the dawning were dispelled-but other clouds were again drawn out of the teeming soil by the beams of the rising sun. More was expected from science than science could bestow, and more was ascribed to nature than nature could perform. The acute Van Helmont and the philosophic Digby compounded the armatory unguent; Bacon, the Chancellor, admitted the existence of the magical power of the will, the delusion which in our days has taken the name of animal magnetism; and Kircher advocated the truth of palingenesy. These delusions were again inevitable. The improvement of the world is destined to proceed in similar cycles; the youth of every individual is distinguished by the same characteristics; and it is ever so with every nascent era of the human race. As far as we can read the history of each generation, the fathers witness in their children a renewal of their own childhood. Whenever a new light bursts upon the eye, it requires some time before the organ can discern clearly amidst the unaccustomed blaze.

Superstition, or undue belief, though in a less terrific aspect,

still haunted the study and the schools, but knowledge continued to advance in an increasing ratio, until a new period opened upon the world. Without any formal refutation, astrology and alchemy ceased to obtain belief; occult qualities were no longer sought; and natural magic and spargirical art became the objects of derision: but the enthusiastic reveries which men now acknowledged as such had been the precursors and causes of sound sense and rational investigation. Before one truth can be ascertained, lives must be worn away in fruitless conjectures. At length the waste of learning had earned its reward, had turned to profit. Boyle grasped the impassive air; Newton told the strength of the unseen chains which link the planets in their orbs, and revealed the order of creation. What was the consequence?—the fervid enthusiasm of a youthful age again appeared.

An undue estimate was again formed of the powers of science. Acute and well-informed men were now inclined to hope that the 'new philosophy' would fill the world with wonders.' Their expectations passed all measure. Glanville thus exclaims in his Scepsis Scientifica, a work addressed to the Royal Society. The glorious undertakers wherewith heaven bath blest our days will leave the world better provided than they found it. And whereas in former times such generous free-spirited worthies were as the rare newly-observed stars, a single one the wonder of an age, and this last century can glory in numerous constellations. I doubt not but that posterity will find many things that now are but rumours verified into practical realities. It may be, some ages hence, a voyage to the southern unknown tracts, yea, possibly, to the moon, will not be more strange than one to America. To those that come after us, it may be as ordinary to buy a pair of wings to fly into the remotest regions, as now a pair of boots to ride a journey. And to confer, at the distance of the Indies, by sympathetic conveyances, may be as usual to future times as to us in a literary correspondence. The restoration of gray hairs to juvenility and renewing the exhausted marrow, may, at length, be effected without a miracle. And the turning the now comparative desert world into a Paradise may not improbably be expected from late agriculture. Now those that judge by the narrowness of former principles and successes will smile at these paradoxical expectations. But questionless those just inventions which have, in these latter ages, altered the face of all things, were as ridiculous to former times in their naked proposals and mere suppositions. To have talked of a new earth to have been discovered had been a romance to antiquity; and to sail without sight of stars or shores by the guidance of a mineral, a story more absurd than the flight of Dædalus. That men should speak after their

tongues

tongues were ashes, or communicate with each other in different hemispheres before the invention of letters, could not but have been thought a fiction. Antiquity would not have believed the almost incredible force of our cannons, and would as coldly have entertained the wonders of the telescope. In these we all condemn antique incredulity. And it is likely posterity will have as much cause to pity ours. But yet, notwithstanding this streightness of shallow observers, there are a set of enlarged souls that are more judiciously credulous. And those who are acquainted with the diligent and ingenious endeavours of so many true philosophers will despair of nothing.'

Such an effervescent belief in the powers of philosophy' may perhaps be considered as injudicious as the reveries of Friar Bacon, and in its origin it is wholly of an analogous character; but it gradually subsided, and the wonders of the new philosophy' were reduced within the limits of possibility. Other wonders, however, were achieved; and the truths discovered by the founders of the Royal Society received a bolder application, by that generation which is now sinking into the grave. Following the first traced path, the mysteries of nature have been further unfolded. The fire which thunders in the clouds has been proved to lurk in the trans lucent amber: resolved into its elements, the wave consumes into the gases which severally warm the blood and bear the aeronaut aloft; and the chemist learns to imprison the subtle vapour which destroying animal life, yet feeds the green leaves of the plant and crystallizes in the diamond.

These discoveries were made in an age emphatically called the Age of Reason. New principles had now been adopted: the creed of Boyle, of Newton, and of Locke was rejected by Philosophy' as an anile' superstition;' and men were taught to worship no deity but nature, and to acknowledge no wisdom but their own. Yet they were not sceptics, they believed too much, and confided too much. The consequences of undue belief and indiscreet zeal again instantly manifested themselves; and whilst every superstition' was denounced by the Philosophers,' they unwittingly indulged in the wildest delights of credulity. There was much sincerity in their enthusiasm. Minds, even of grave and sober cast-men who professed that they obeyed no other dictates than those of reason-joined in every word and sentiment uttered by Condorcet, when he proclaimed aloud the infinite perfectibility of the human race, emancipated from all former evils produced by fanaticism and tyranny,' and an age of reason, when wonders were to be produced, such as the believers of the age of superstition hardly hoped to perform. One of the efficient causes of the Millennium of philosophy thus prophesied, was to be the invention

of

of a universal language, which, daily acquiring more extent and perfection, will define all matters cognizable by the human mind with such precision, as to render any error next to impossible.' As for the perfectibility of the human race,'' will it be absurd,' inquires Condorcet, the sturdy antagonist of the dreams of superstition, to suppose it to be susceptible of an indefinite progress?— that the time will arrive when death will be the effect only of extraordinary accidents or of the destruction-which will gradually become more and more tardy-of the vital forces ?—and that, in effect, the duration of the middle period between birth and this destruction, has in itself no assignable term?-Certainly man will not be immortal-but the distance between the moment when he begins to live and the mean era when naturally, without accident or sickness, he feels the difficulty of being, may it not perpetually increase?" may it not continually come nearer to an unlimited extent without ever reaching it-or acquire, in the immensity of time, a greater extent than any determinate quantity which may have been assigned as its limit? In the latter, its increase will really be infinite in the most absolute sense, since there is no term at which it ought to stop.' Such was the belief of one of the teachers of modern republican philosophy, and shared by no small portion of his school!

Extremes are ever fated to meet. In the age of superstition-an age of confident faith-every difficulty was solved, and every doubt was silenced, by appealing to the mysterious influence of spirit, and by attributing all the operations of nature to the immediate workings of the great First Cause, and to the direct action of those immaterial beings who might be deemed the ministers of Infinite power. By excluding from consideration the machinery through which Providence guides the material world, a wild and enthusiastic system of credulity was formed, wholly derogating from Supreme might and goodness, and humiliating to those by whom it is received. This we justly call 'superstition,' and it is justly reprobated. But the very increase of knowledge, which dispelled these errors, has ended in bringing new perplexities upou mankind. The confidence which it has imparted to the pride of human intellect has cheated us into another species of credulity no less mischievous and degrading. Bounded by the tangible and sensible elements of creation, philosophy will recognize no cause of vitality except what can be dissected by the scalpel, or distinguished by the test, or breathed from the retort; no being, except matter.

Having adopted this train of reasoning, it has been the earnest endeavour of the French, the great leaders of modern Materialism, to relieve us from any consciousness of incorporeal existence, and