Arundel, at Highgate, attended by one or two faithful friends. At his own request he was buried near his mother in the Church of St. Michael, at St. Albans. Over his tomb is loyal Sir Thomas Meautys's monument of him, with a stately Latin epitaph by Sir Henry Wotton. His will leaves his name and memory "to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages.

BACON AS A PHILOSOPHER

It will be neither desirable nor necessary to present more than a rapid outline here of the Baconian philosophy, with an estimate of its worth and influence.

"Father of inductive science" is the title frequently, even generally, bestowed upon Bacon. This title belongs to him, however, rather in reference to the large and would-be successful adventure of his fertile mind in day of intellectual vagary and confusion, than in reference to either his idea of a natural philosophy or his method of establishing that idea. His idea, indeed, failed to take into account the complexity and versatility of nature, and his method was fatally depersonalized-if. we may use the worda method in itself arbitrary and mechanical, ignoring the value of imagination as framing hypotheses, of enthusiasm as giving zest to the chase of causal relations, and of humility in yielding as merely tentative theories that should become unfit to account for newly observed phenomena.

Bacon's prime idea was, in a word, induction. This was not even in his day by any means a novel idea, but he gave to it great dignity and clearness. He insisted upon trial by experiment, upon the faithful and minute examination of all known facts as the first step in the movement toward a comprehensive and interpretative knowledge. He believed that this kingdom of knowledge was open to all men who would walk therein steadily and with assurance; that guesses were vain; that past philosophies had been largely barren; that facile generalizations must be forsworn; and that, ascending as from the base to the apex of a triangle, man must pass slowly but certainly from masses of fact, by means of comparison and elimination, to the pure form, or cause, or essence, which, once known, is known as fixed and changeless.

The most thorough and admiring students of Bacon's philosophy, however, such as Ellis, Spedding, Nichol, and others, willing though they be to attribute to him and to the Frenchman Descartes the setting in motion of the modern impulse in philosophy, recognize the weaknesses in the elaborate programme of the Novum Organum and its author's failure to realize his programme. Briefly stated, the weaknesses of Bacon as a philosopher are these: he himself had not the temper of the inductive scientist. "His centuries of observations on useful science, and his experiments,' Emerson supposes, were worth nothing. One hint of Franklin, or Watt, or Dalton, or Davy, or any one who had a talent for experiment, was worth

all his lifetime of exquisite trifles." He tended to ignore the importance of thorough personal equipment in the investigator, and was without regard, therefore, for mathematics, a necessary companion in precisely such undertakings as his. Again, if he lacked the patience of the scientist, he lacked also his enthusiasm. His tone in the Novum Organum and the De Augmentis Scientiarum sometimes waxes overlofty and positive, or becomes on occasion coldly directive. He did not bring all of himself to his great task, his work often suggesting rather the well-oiled processes of the professional thinker than the high. spirit of Emerson's Man Thinking. Further, as indicated above, he seeks to cancel all hypotheses, which, however, must be conceived as antecedent ideas in order to the success of any scientific enterprise. He asserted that his own method was so certain as to preclude all necessity for preconceptions. Yet, and largely for this very reason, he himself failed to make any one definite contribution to the discoveries of Science, allowing himself to be outstripped by lesser men than he, his contemporaries Kepler, Harvey, and Gilbert.

Bacon's name, nevertheless, will justly remain famous as that of England's greatest philosopher, in that his principles were sounder than he knew. Though his reach exceeded his grasp, he saw pretty clearly that the inductive system must be rescued from loose ways and cleansed from the errors conceived in the bad company of tradition. He spoke out

boldly in favour of methods of examination which he himself was too preoccupied and unequipped to pursue in the free spirit with which he proclaimed them. "He spoke the thoughts of patient toilers like Harvey," says Church, "with a largeness and richness which they could not command, and which they perhaps smiled at. He disentangled and spoke the vague thoughts of his age, which other men had not the courage and clearness of mind to formulate. What Bacon did, indeed, and what he meant, are separate matters. He meant an infallible method by which man should be fully equipped for a struggle with nature: he meant an irresistible and immediate conquest, within a definite and not distant time. It was too much. He himself saw no more of what he meant than Columbus did of America. But what he did was, to persuade men for the future that the intelligent, patient, persevering cross-examination of things, and the thoughts about them, was the only, and was the successful road to know."

Hamlet's admiration for the greatness of man is shared by Bacon in so far at least as it relates to the nobility of his reason and the divineness of his apprehension. Despite the ineffectiveness of his own experiments, as Emerson goes on to tell us, "he drinks of a diviner stream, and marks the influx of idealism into England. Where that goes is poetry, health, and progress." And it is of chief importance here that we shall recognize the great value of Bacon's work in philosophy as claiming for man the intellect

ual power requisite for the mastery of nature's laws and secrets. It is this high declaration of enterprise, this assured promise of victory, that wins for Bacon the suffrages of all succeeding explorers in the world of thought. As a student of nature," wrote E. P. Whipple in The Atlantic Monthly for November, 1868, "his fame is greater than his deserts; as a student of human nature, he is hardly yet appreciated; and it is to the greater part of the first book of the Novum Organum, where he deals in general reflections on those mental habits and dispositions which interfere with pure intellectual conscientiousness, and where his beneficent spirit and rich imagination lend sweetness and beauty to the homeliest practical wisdom, that the reader impatiently returns, after being wearied with the details of his method given in the second book. His method was antiquated in his own lifetime; but it is to be feared that centuries hence his analysis of the idols of the human understanding will be as fresh and new as human vanity and pride."

To conclude this brief review, let it be noticed that Bacon's work spells, in its own way, the name of God. It is not dispassionate merely, but philanthropic. He desired not only to instruct, but also to elevate, mankind, and accordingly informs his words often with something more than knowledge

"... earthly of the mind,

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul."