doctrine concerning the generation of simple and complex bodies, written by James Martin of Dunkeld, then a professor at Turin. These two books must have been among the first published by the university press, after the restoration of its licence by Burghley, the chancellor, in this year1.

In clearness of thought and argumentative skill Temple was far superior to Digby. On the more special point in dispute between them-whether the method of knowledge is twofold, from particulars to universals and from universals to particulars, or whether there is only one method of reasoning, that from universals-the truth was not entirely on Temple's side. Nor had his method anything in common with the induction used in the physical sciences. But, in spite of its theoretical weakness, the new logic he recommended had the advantage of clearness and practicality, and was free from the complicated subtleties of the traditional systems. That Bacon was acquainted with the works of Digby and Temple is highly probable, though it cannot be conclusively established. Their influence upon him, however, must have consisted mainly in stimulating his interest in the question of method: they did not anticipate his theory of induction.

While these questions occupied the schools, William Gilbert, fellow of St John's College, Cambridge (1561), president of the Royal College of Physicians (1600), was engaged in the laborious and systematic pursuit of experiments on magnetism which resulted in the publication of the first great English work of physical science, De Magnete, magneticisque corporibus (1600). Gilbert expressed himself as decidedly as did Bacon afterwards on the futility of expecting to arrive at knowledge of nature by mere speculation or by a few vague experiments. He had indeed no theory of induction; but he was conscious that he was introducing a "new style of philosophising." His work contains a series of carefully graduated experi1 See Mullinger, op. cit. 11, pp. 297, 405.

ments, each one of which is devised so as to answer a particular question, while the simpler and more obvious facts were set forth first, and their investigation led by orderly stages to that of the more complex and subtle. It is unfortunate that Bacon was so little appreciative of Gilbert's book, as a careful analysis of the method actually employed in it might have guarded him from some errors. Gilbert has been called "the first real physicist and the first trustworthy methodical experimenter1." He was also the founder of the theory of magnetism and electricity; and he gave the latter its name, vis electrica. He explained the inclination of the magnetic needle by his conception of the earth as a magnet with two poles; he defended the Copernican theory; and, in his discussion of the attraction of bodies, there is a suggestion of the doctrine of universal gravitation. He had also reached a correct view of the atmosphere as extending only a few miles from the surface of the earth, with nothing but empty space beyond.

On an altogether different plane from Gilbert were two younger contemporaries of Bacon. Robert Fludd, a graduate of Oxford, was a man of fame in his day. He followed Paracelsus, defended the Rosicrucians and attacked Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, and Galileo. His works are distinguished by fantastic speculation rather than by scientific method. Nathanael Carpenter, a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, attacked the physical theory of Aristotle in his Philosophia libera (1621). The works of William Harvey belong to the period following Bacon's death, although he had announced his discovery of the circulation of the blood in 1616.

1 K. Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik (1890), 1, p. 315.

CHAPTER II

FRANCIS BACON

THE English language may be said to have become for the first time the vehicle of philosophical literature by the publication of Bacon's Advancement of Learning in 1605. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, which preceded it by eleven years, belongs to theology rather than to philosophy; the nature of William Baldwin's Treatise of Moral Phylosophie, containing the Sayings of the Wyse (1547) is sufficiently indicated by its title; and the little-known treatise of Sir Richard Barckley, entitled A Discourse of the felicitie of man: or his Summum bonum (1598), consists mainly of amusing or improving anecdotes, and contains nothing of the nature of a moral philosophy. In the sixteenth century, however, a beginning had been made at writing works on logic in English. In 1552, Thomas Wilson published The Rule of Reason, conteining the arte of logique. The innovation was not without danger at the time, if it be true that his publication on this subject in a vulgar tongue led to the author's imprisonment by the Inquisition at Rome. His example was followed in safer circumstances by Ralph Lever, who, in his Arte of Reason rightly termed Witcraft, teaching a perfect way to argue and dispute (1573), not only wrote in English, but used words of English derivation in place of the traditional terminology -foreset and backset for "subject" and "predicate," inholder and inbeer for "substance" and "accident," saywhat for "definition" and so on. This attempt was never taken seriously; and a considerable time had to elapse before English became the usual language for books on logic. In the seventeenth century, as well as in the sixteenth, the demands of the universities made the use of Latin almost essential for the purpose.

Bacon's predecessors, whether in science or in philosophy, used the common language of learned men. He was the first to write an important treatise on science or philosophy in English; and even he had no faith in the future of the English language1. In the Advancement he had a special purpose in view: he wished to get support and cooperation in carrying out his plans; and he regarded the book as only preparatory to a larger scheme. The works intended to form part of his great design for the renewal of the sciences were written in Latin. But the traditional commonwealth of thought was weakened by the forces which issued in the Renaissance; and, among these forces, the increased consciousness of nationality led gradually to greater differentiation in national types of culture, and to the use of the national language even for subjects which appealed chiefly or only to the community of learned men. However much he may have preferred the Latin tongue as the vehicle of his philosophy, Bacon's own action made him a leader of this movement; and it so happened that the type of thought which he expounded had affinities with the practical and positive achievements of the English mind. In this way Bacon has come to be regarded, not altogether correctly, not only as the beginner of English philosophy, but also as representative of the special characteristics of the English philosophical genius.

Francis Bacon was the younger of the two sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal, by his second wife Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke and sister-in-law of Lord Burghley. He was born at York House, London, on 22 January 1561. In April 1573 he was sent, along with his brother Anthony, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained (except for an absence of about six months when the plague raged there) till Christmas 1575. Of his studies in Cambridge we know little or nothing; and it would be easy to lay too 1 Letters and Life, ed. Spedding, vii, p. 429.

great stress on the statement long afterwards made to Rawley, his first biographer, that, before he left the university, he "fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way." In 1576 he was sent by his father to France with Sir Amyas Paulet, the ambassador, and in his suite he remained until recalled home by Sir Nicholas's sudden death in February 1579. This event had an unfortunate effect upon his career. A sum of money which his father had set apart to purchase an estate for him had not been invested, and he inherited a fifth part of it only. He had therefore to look to the bar for an income and to the grudging favour of the Cecils for promotion. He was called to the bar in 1582, and entered parliament in 1584: sitting in each successive House of Commons until he became lord keeper. But office was long in coming to him. The queen had been affronted by an early speech of his in parliament in which he had criticised the proposals of the court; and the Cecils always proved more kin than kind. The objects which he sought were never unworthy nor beyond his merits; but he sought them in ways not always dignified. He pleaded his cause in many letters to Burghley and Salisbury and Buckingham; and the style of his supplications can hardly be accounted for altogether by the epistolary manners of the period. In 1589 Burghley got him the reversion of an office in the Star Chamber, worth about £1600 a year; but to this he did not succeed till 1608. From about 1597 he had come to be employed regularly as one of the queen's learned counsel. In 1604 he was made one of his ordinary counsel by King James, with a salary of £40; and Bacon reckoned this as his first preferment. He was made solicitor-general in 1607, attorney-general in 1613, privy councillor in 1616, lord keeper in 1617, lord chancellor in 1618. He was knighted in 1603, but, to his chagrin, along with a crowd of three hundred others;