like those of the alchemists,--too
imperfect to elicit the light which should guide.

Bacon having completed his discussion of the _Idola_, then proceeds to
point out the weakness of the old philosophies, which produced leaves
rather than fruit, and were stationary in their character. Here he
would seem to lean towards utilitarianism, were it not that he is as
severe on men of experiment as on men of dogma. "The men of experiment
are," says he, "like ants,--they only collect and use; the reasoners
resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the
bee takes a middle course; it gathers the material from the flowers, but
digests it by a power of its own.... So true philosophy neither chiefly
relies on the powers of the mind, nor takes the matter which it gathers
and lays it up in the memory, whole as it finds it, but lays it up in
the understanding, to be transformed and digested." Here he simply
points out the laws by which true knowledge is to be attained. He does
not extol physical science alone, though doubtless he had a preference
for it over metaphysical inquiries. He was an Englishman, and the
English mind is objective rather than subjective, and is prone to
over-value the outward and the seen, above the inward and unseen; and
perhaps for the same reason that the Old Testament seems to make
prosperity the greatest blessing, while adversity seems to be the
blessing of the New Testament.

One of Bacon's longest works is the "Silva Sylvarum,"--a sort of natural
history, in which he treats of the various forces and productions of
Nature,--the air the sea, the winds, the clouds, plants and animals,
fire and water, sounds and discords, colors and smells, heat and cold,
disease and health; but which varied subjects he presents to
communicate knowledge, with no especial utilitarian end.

"The Advancement of Learning" is one of Bacon's most famous productions,
but I fail to see in it an objective purpose to enable men to become
powerful or rich or comfortable; it is rather an abstract treatise, as
dry to most people as legal disquisitions, and with no more reference to
rising in the world than "Blackstone's Commentaries" or "Coke upon
Littleton." It is a profound dissertation on the excellence of learning;
its great divisions treating of history, poetry, and philosophy,--of
metaphysical as well as physical philosophy; of the province of
understanding, the memory, the will, the reason, and the imaginati