magnitude of the task. And there have been men of universal minds and comprehensive knowledge since BaconLeibnitz, Goethe, Humboldt, men whose thoughts were at home everywhere where there was something to be known. But even for them the world of knowledge has grown too large. We shall never again see an Aristotle or a Bacon, because the conditions of knowledge have altered. Bacon, like Aristotle, belonged to an age of adventure, which went to sea little knowing whither it went, and ill furnished with knowledge and instruments. He entered with a vast and vague scheme of discovery on these unknown seas and new worlds which to us are familiar, and daily traversed in every direction. This new world of knowledge has turned out in many ways very different from what Aristotle or Bacon purposed, and has been conquered by implements and weapons very different in precision and power from what they purposed to rely on. But the combination of patient and careful industry with the courage and divination of genius, in doing what none had done. before, makes it equally stupid and idle to impeach their greatness.

(SPRAT, History of the Royal Society, third edition (1722), pp. 35, 36.)

The third sort of new philosophers have been those who have not only disagreed from the ancients, but have also proposed to themselves the right course of slow and sure experimenting; and have prosecuted it as far as the shortness of their own lives, or the multiplicity of their other affairs, or the narrowness of their fortunes, have given them leave. Such as these we are to expect to be but few; for they must divest themselves of many vain conceptions, and overcome a thousand false images which lie like monsters in their way, before they can get as far as this. And of these I shall only mention one great man, who had the true imagination of the whole extent

of this enterprise, as it is now set on foot; and that is the Lord Bacon, in whose books there are everywhere scattered the best arguments that can be produced for the defense of experimental philosophy, and the best directions that are needful to promote it all which he has already adorned with so much art that if my desires could have prevailed with some excellent friends of mine who engaged me to this work, there should have been no other preface to the History of the Royal Society but some of his writings. But methinks in this one man I do at once find enough occasion to admire the strength of human wit, and to bewail the weakness of a mortal condition. For is it not wonderful that he, who had run through all the degrees of that profession which usually takes up men's whole time, who had studied, and practised, and governed the common law, who had always lived in the crowd and borne the greatest burden of civil business, should yet find leisure enough for these retired studies to excel all those men who separate themselves for this very purpose? He was a man of strong, clear, and powerful imaginations; his genius was searching and inimitable; and of this I need give no other proof than his style itself, which, as for the most part it describes men's minds as well as pictures do their bodies, so it did his above all men living. The course of it vigorous and majestical; the wit bold and familiar; the comparisons fetched out of the way, and yet the more easy in all expressing a soul equally skilled in men and nature. All this and much more is true of him, but yet his philosophical works do show that a single and busy hand can never grasp all this whole design of which we treat. His rules were admirable, yet his history not so faithful as might have been wished in many places; he seems rather to take all that comes than to choose, and to heap rather than to register. But I hope this accusation of mine can be no great injury

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to his memory, seeing at the same time that I say he had not the strength of a thousand men, I do also allow him to have had as much as twenty.

IV. TWO PRAYERS OF BACON.1

1. THE STUDENT'S PRAYER.

To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour forth most humble and hearty supplications that He, remembering the calamities of mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open to us new refreshments out of the fountains of His goodness, for the alleviating of our miseries. This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds towards the divine mysteries, but rather that by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith's. Amen.

2. THE WRITER'S PRAYER.

Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which, coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy glory. Thou, after thou hadst reviewed the works which thy hands had made, beheldest that everything was very good, and thou didst rest with complacency in them.

1 Works, ed. Ellis, Spedding, and Heath, 7. 259; cf. 4. 32.

But man, reflecting on the works which he had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could by no means acquiesce in them. Wherefore if we labor in thy works with the sweat of our brows, thou wilt make us partakers of thy vision and thy Sabbath. We humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly in us, and that thou, by our hands and also by the hands of others on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please to convey a largeness of new alms to thy family of mankind. These things we commend to thy everlasting love, by our Jesus, thy Christ, God with us.

Amen.