The errors into which this great man occasionally falls, reads us a valuable lesson in the right method of philosophizing. He was, to an extent very remarkable, when we consider the age in which he lived, an experimental philosopher; but still he had not learned by any means the whole importance of that diligent inquisition of nature which was, some centuries later, demonstrated by his illustrious namesake, to be the one sure foundation of philosophy. There is one thing, accordingly, with which we cannot fail to be struck in following his speculations. His experiments are almost wholly directed, not to the ascertainment of principles, but only to their exemplification. It may sometimes have chanced that he did in this way discover, or rather obtain a hint of, a new truth in science, or a hitherto unsuspected property in the substances or instruments he was employing; but this was always merely an accidental result, and never the direct object of his examination of them. Hence, although he made some important additions to the truths of philosophy, he effected no diminution in the long list of errors and falsehoods by which it was in his time encumbered. With him, as with all his contempora. ries, all was true that was generally believed, or that was to be found in any of those works which it was customary to regard as authorities. It is abundantly plain that he had no clear conception of the true grounds of belief in philosophy. With all the ingenious and original views, accordingly, in which his writings abound, they contain at the same time, it must be admitted, not a little of both hasty and extravagant inference. For not only does it never enter his imagination to doubt the correctness of anything that has been stated by his predecessors, or to examine nature with a view to ascertain the reality of those properties which they have imputed to her, but, with a corresponding ignorance or disregard of the true laws of evidence

as to such matters, he continually advances to his general conclusions from much too limited an induction of particulars, and without anything like a sufficient consideration of the whole circumstances, even of the cases to which his attention is directed. Thus, there can be little doubt that some even of the mechanical designs we have just mentioned were merely his imaginations of what might be accomplished by the most perfect combinations of certain natural powers, which, however, he had never actually applied, so as to produce such effects, nor contemplated very attentively in any case with reference to all the conditions of his supposed invention. It is with the same looseness that we find him in another place asserting the possibility of making lamps that would burn for ever, and talking, on the authority of Pliny, of a certain stone which attracts gold, silver, and all other metals, "the consideration whereof," he remarks with some simplicity," makes me think there is not anything, whether in divine or outward matters, too difficult for my faith." And, indeed, it appears to be so; from many of the stories which he quotes, especially those from Aristotle's Secretum Secretorum,* which is one of his greatest authorities, are such as one should think could hardly have failed to prove too monstrous for his belief, if it had not been of this infinite capacity.

The influence of this sanguine and over credulous disposition is very discernible in his optical speculations. He was here blinded and misled in the most extraordinary manner by certain notions he had imbibed from the prevailing philosophy, upon the subject of what were called the species of objects, which were certain shadows or images of themselves, which bodies of all kinds were imagin

Literally The Secret of Secrets, a spurious production attributed to Aristotle, in high favour in the dark ages, and filled with the most ridiculous marvels and absurdities.

ed to be continually throwing off, and which, when received into the mind, constituted the ideas of the things from which they had come. In conformity with this singularly absurd theory, Bacon contends, that any object may reflect upon another the species or image of whatever power or quality is inherent in itself; that a man, for example, may, by means of words spoken under strong emotion, transmit to another object, no matter whether sentient or not, such an emanation of the passion under which he labours, that a certain effect which he desires to operate on that object shall be thereby immediately produced. If such a phenomenon as this has never been actually exhibited, he conceives that it is owing solely to the emotion never having existed in sufficient intensity when the experiment was attempted. After this we need not wonder at what he says about the reflective powers of mirrors. Glasses, he assures us, 66 may be framed to send forth species, and poisonous infectious influences, whither a man pleaseth; and this invention Aristotle showed Alexander, by which he erected the poison of a basilisk upon the wall of a city," &c. &c. In another place we are informed, in a jargon which will scarcely bear translation, “that all things are to be known by the science of Perspective, since all the doings of nature take place through the multiplication of species and virtues from the agents of this world into the patients." And many other passages might be quoted in the same style.

These were the prejudices of education, which even such a mind as that of Bacon was not powerful enough altogether to escape from. They were in part, too, the natural produce of that sanguine temperament which appertained to him as a man of inventive genius, and one given rather to look forward to the future than back upon the past. The minds that have enlarged the bounds of science by

positive discoveries, seem to be of a different order from those to which we are indebted for the demolition of ancient systems of imposture or delusion. Lord Bacon, who first overthrew the despotism of Aristotle, and rid philosophy of the standard superstition by which it had so long been encumbered and overshadowed, achieved nothing beyond the old border-line of the territory which he had thus cleared. Newton, on the other hand, whose conquests were all on the outer side of this hitherto untraversed bourn, might possibly, had he lived in another age, have failed to detect those consecrated errors in the method of philosophizing, which were so happily exposed by Lord Bacon.

Astronomy is another of the departments of mathematical physics in which Friar Bacon had made wonderful proficiency for his age. As a proof of this, we may mention that he is recorded to have suggested, in a letter to his patron, Clement IV., the same reformation of the Calendar which was introduced three hundred years afterward by Pope Gregory XIII., and which has been long adopted by nearly all Christendom, the English government having formerly recognised and enacted it in the year 1752; and Russia being now the only country in which the old reckoning prevails. Geography and chronology were also favourite studies of Bacon's; and both are ably and learnedly treated of among those of his works which still exist.

We have already mentioned the extraordinary imaginations which in those days formed so impor. tant a part of physical science; and, in regard to most of these, this great man had not risen above the universal faith of his age. He was a believer in all the wild pretensions both of astrology and alchymy. Of the latter art, indeed, he was one of the earliest disciples among the Latins, as the Christian inhabitants of Europe used then to be called in contradistinction to the Jews and Saracens, by

whom it had been cultivated for several centuries before. But it is unnecessary to refer more particularly to any of his unintelligible disquisitions on these subjects, which, couched as they generally are in a most peculiar and mystical style, seem, in truth, hardly intended to convey any meaning even in the original, and certainly were never meant to be translated. It is sufficient to remark, that the influence of the stars upon human affairs is one of the fundamental laws of his astronomy; and that he has no doubt of the existence of a universal menstruum, or solvent, having the power both of converting all other metals into gold, and of purifying the human body from all its corruptions, and prolonging life through many ages.

In his pursuit of the philosopher's stone, however, Bacon had undoubtedly acquired a considerable knowledge of the properties of various natural substances, and made several real discoveries in chymistry. Of these, the most remarkable of which his works give us any notice, is his discovery of gunpowder. We have no account from himself of the manner in which he arrived at this discovery; but nothing can be more probable than the statement of another old writer, that he was indebted for it merely to the accident of a vessel, in which the different ingredients of the composition happened to be mixed, exploding on being heated. The way in which he himself mentions the matter is exceedingly curious, and very characteristic of the philosophy of the times. He describes the wonderful properties of his secret mixture in various parts of his works. For example, in his treatise on the Miracles of Art and Nature, he enumerates among "his strange experiments," "the making of thunder and lightning in the air; yea, with a greater advantage of horror than those which are only produced by nature; for a very competent quantity of matter, rightly prepared (the bigness of one's thumb), will