age is not inferior to classical
antiquity; and that the races of the earth form now a sort of "mundane
republic."

CHAPTER II. UTILITY THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: BACON

1.

Among the great precursors of a new order of thought Francis Bacon
occupies a unique position. He drew up a definite programme for a
"great Renovation" of knowledge; he is more clearly conscious than his
contemporaries of the necessity of breaking with the past and making
a completely new start; and his whole method of thought seems
intellectually nearer to us than the speculations of a Bruno or a
Campanella. Hence it is easy to understand that he is often regarded,
especially in his own country, as more than a precursor, as the first
philosopher, of the modern age, definitely within its precincts.
[Footnote: German critics have been generally severe on Bacon as
deficient in the scientific spirit. Kuno Fischer, Baco van Verulam
(1856). Liebig, Ueber Francis Bacon van Verulam und die Methode der
Naturforschung (1863). Lange (Geschichte des Materialismus, i. 195)
speaks of "die aberglaubische und eitle Unwissenschaftlichkeit Bacos."]

It is not indeed a matter of fundamental importance how we classify
these men who stood on the border of two worlds, but it must
be recognised that if in many respects Bacon is in advance of
contemporaries who cannot be dissociated from the Renaissance, in other
respects, such as belief in astrology and dreams, he stands on the same
ground, and in one essential point--which might almost be taken as
the test of mental progress at this period--Bruno and Campanella have
outstripped him. For him Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo worked in vain;
he obstinately adhered to the old geocentric system.

It must also be remembered that the principle which he laid down in his
ambitious programme for the reform of science--that experiment is the
key for discovering the secrets of nature--was not a new revelation. We
need not dwell on the fact that he had been anticipated by Roger Bacon;
for the ideas of that wonderful thinker had fallen dead in an age
which was not ripe for them. But the direct interrogation of nature
was already recognised both in practice and in theory in the sixteenth
century. What Bacon did was to insist upon the principle more strongly
and explicitly, and to formulate it more precisely. He clarified and
explained the progressive ideas which inspired the scientific thought
of the last period of the European R