connected with a philosophical movement destined to develop ceaselessly and be carried on from Herbert of Cherbury, Hobbes, and Locke, to the deists and sceptics of the eighteenth century.

IV.

Experience is so much a necessity of human life that nearly always, contrary to what one might imagine, theory is subsequent to practice; people act first, and then establish rules of conduct; primum vivere, deinde philosophari. When Boileau, when Pope wrote their Poetical Arts, they thought they were laying down laws for future poets, and they were only summing up the customs in use before they wrote; they thought themselves prophets and were only historians.

The Renaissance had put an end to the inconceivable misunderstanding which, out of that marvellous instrument of progress, the work of Aristotle, had made an instrument of death. That which, on the high road of learning, should have been a sign-post, had become a barrier. Aristotle had shown the way, and had given the means to outstrip his science by adding to it. His commentators and worshippers had declared that everything was contained in him, and that it was sacrilege to seek elsewhere. They had devoted entire lives and prodigious ingenuity to proving this, and, the better to honour the object of their idolatry, had done their best to render his doctrine fruitless.

They had very nearly succeeded; not quite. As early

the experimental method people still were; many of Raleigh's statements on matters of natural history, given by him as averred facts, would seem rather to be borrowed from Lyly's mythology of animals and plants.

'Herbert of Cherbury's "De Veritate" was published in 1624, Hobbes's "Leviathan" in 1651, Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding" in

as the Middle Ages, a few rare minds had revolted; experience, besides, is so necessary to man that, in practice, unable to do otherwise, people had continued to experiment, to observe, to discover; but they were going haphazard, with less confidence and success than should have been. Most of them made experiments without knowing it, as Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose, and as Raleigh's milkmaid made her cheeses; they made discoveries by chance and in spite of themselves. Too many facts were held as certain, indisputable and sacred, and were still long to remain so; no one dared either to contest or verify them: the master had said it, a master had said it, some one had said it. Hearsays had become articles of scientific faith. The generality of thinkers, and, in their wake, the generality of men, accepted such laws; they deducted from premises erroneous, and held as indisputable, logical consequences falser still; and thus swelled, from century to century, the patrimony of errors passed into axioms which were the pride of humanity. It was, as we have seen, one of the most memorable effects of the Renaissance to break these ancient hieratic moulds and to resume the onward march. The great men of the time showed that the best way to honour the master was not to adore, but to imitate him.1

One of the most complete geniuses of the day, and one of the best representatives of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, had early and publicly declared in favour of experimental methods and against the unpardonable abuse of the "Magister dixit," that is, the principle of authority. "If I cannot," he said, referring to the blind sectators of antiquity, "quote authors, I will

The movement of reaction against Aristotle was, as is common in like cases, carried to excess by some, and chiefly by the famous La Ramée (Ramus) in his "Animadversiones in dialecticam Aristotelis, Libri xx," Paris, 1543.

invoke a thing far higher, far worthier, invoking experience, the mistress of their masters." I Copernicus had dared to test the system of the universe, up to then admitted by all, and to declare it false. Merely following the current, and without being by profession a physician, Sir Thomas Elyot, author of the "Governour," had written his "Castel of Helth," to show the necessity of taking more into account, in the preparation of remedies, the true informacion of the sicke man." 2 As early as 1535, Gilles d'Albi, the "father of French zoology," declared that he had drawn much from the ancients, but much also from experience, " non pauca experti sumus";3 and he concluded his Topography of Constantinople with the statement that he agreed with the Platonicians, according to whom "there is no limit to the search for truth, except the finding of it."4 Realdo Colombo, Vesale's successor at Padua, had discovered pulmonary circulation,5 preparing the way for the illustrious William Harvey, who broadened the question and solved it by his discovery of the general circulation of the blood in the human body. Harvey made that discovery about 1616, taught it in his lectures, and finally published it

་

"Léonard de Vinci... Essai de biographie psychologique," by Gabriel Séailles, 1892, pp. 189 ff.

...

2 "The Castel of Helth," 1st ed. 1534; cf. supra, vol. II. p. 66. 3 "Ex Æliani Historia, per Petrum Gyllium Latini facti Libri xvi." Lyons, 1535, 4to. E. T. Hamy, "Pierre Gilles d'Albi," Toulouse, 1900, p. 15.

4 This notion sustained him in his task: "Sive constantiæ causa, sive rei honestas ad ea me impulit, confirmato Platonicorum judicio tradentium nullum esse modum vestigandi veri, nisi inveneris."-" De Topographia Constantinopoleos," Lyons, 1561, 4to.

5 Colombo published only in 1559 the treatise on anatomy in which he recorded his discovery, but his oral teachings had already made it known, and it is probably from him that Michel Servet drew the account of this theory which he incidentally gives in his Christianismi Restitutio," 1559. See Dastre: "Les trois époques d'une Découverte scientifique," Revue des Deux Mondes, August 1, 1884.

in his treatise on the movement of the heart and blood in animals in 1628.1 Numerous experiments had led him to his conclusions: "I have pursued diligent researches, internally examining, time and again, varied and numerous live animals, comparing many observations." 2

The time had now come for the drawing up of theories in accord with such fecund practice; the task was fulfilled masterfully, with that dignity which commands respect, by Francis Bacon.

The philosopher was born on the 22nd of January, 1561, at York House, London. He was the younger son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, for twenty years Lord keeper of the great seal under Elizabeth and celebrated for his learning and for an eloquence recalling antique models.3 His mother was a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke (who had been tutor to Edward VI.) and a sister of Lady Cecil; Bacon was therefore a nephew by marriage of Elizabeth's great minister.

Very young he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, then studied law in London; he started for France in 1576, attached to the British ambassador, and returned three years later, at the news of his father's death, which left him in an embarrassed situation of fortune. Already used to a luxurious style of living, his mind occupied

"Exercitatio anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in animalibus, Guilielmi Harvei Angli, medici regii, et professoris anatomiæ in Collegio Medicorum Londinensi," Francfort, 1628, 4to, a few plates. He mentions in his preface his previous teachings: "Meam de motu et usu cordis et circuitu sanguinis . . . sententiam . . antea sæpius in prælectionibus meis Anatomicis aperui novam . . ."

"... Et disquisitione et diligentia usus, multa frequenter et varia animalia viva introspiciendo, multis observationibus collatis . . ." (pp. 20, 21). 3... I have come to the Lord keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and found him sitting in his gallery alone with the works of Quintilian before him; indeed he was a most eloquent man."-"Arte of English Poesie," 1589, by, almost surely, Puttenham, Arber's reprint, p. 151.

with problems more interesting than that of making both ends meet, and quite incapable besides of limiting his expenses, he got from that moment into debt, and remained so, uninterruptedly, till his death forty-seven years later. Pensions, gifts, high salaries were of no avail; he continued living beyond his means, and even became acquainted, at one time, with the debtors' prison.

On his return from France, he devotes himself to politics and the law. He is, thanks no doubt to his uncle, elected to Parliament, and is for a long while a member of the House, where he is more and more looked up to, admired, and respected. "No man," said Ben Jonson, "ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. . . . His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. ... The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end." I

He assigns to himself thenceforth two connected tasks: to rise in the world, and to be of service to the kingdom and to humanity. He devotes to the one and the other an equal activity and the resources of an ample genius. The ardour of pursuit is so great that it is not possible for him to conceal the means he employs. His treatises, his letters of advice to the great, summaries of his speeches, plenty of contemporaneous testimony, not to speak of his fundamental works, exist and permit one to judge with certainty this great mind, who was not a great character. From his lack of character came his errors and his fall, and those meaner sides of his nature which vitiate the wisdom of his profoundest political views.

Bacon was, before all, sharp-sighted: neither the refined scruples of delicate consciences, nor the impulsive

Timber, or Discoveries," lxxi, "Dominus Verulamius,"