controlled by an ardent patriotism and an earnest sense of
religion; and with all their regard for the royal prerogative, they
never lost their regard for the law. The grandeur and originality of
Bacon's intellect parted him from men like these quite as much as the
bluntness of his moral perceptions. In politics, as in science, he had
little reverence for the past. Law, constitutional privileges, or
religion, were to him simply means of bringing about certain ends of
good government; and if these ends could be brought about in shorter
fashion he saw only pedantry in insisting on more cumbrous means. He had
great social and political ideas to realize, the reform and codification
of the law, the civilization of Ireland, the purification of the Church,
the union--at a later time--of Scotland and England, educational
projects, projects of material improvement, and the like; and the direct
and shortest way of realizing these ends was, in Bacon's eyes, the use
of the power of the Crown. But whatever charm such a conception of the
royal power might have for her successor, it had little charm for
Elizabeth; and to the end of her reign Bacon was foiled in his efforts
to rise in her service.

[Sidenote: The Novum Organum.]

Political activity however and Court intrigue left room in his mind for
the philosophical speculation which had begun with his earliest years.
Amidst debates in Parliament and flatteries in the closet Bacon had been
silently framing a new philosophy. It made its first decisive appearance
after the final disappointment of his hopes from Elizabeth in the
publication of the "Advancement of Learning." The close of this work
was, in his own words, "a general and faithful perambulation of
learning, with an enquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste and not
improved and converted by the industry of man; to the end that such a
plot, made and recorded to memory, may both minister light to any public
designation and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours." It was only
by such a survey, he held, that men could be turned from useless
studies, or ineffectual means of pursuing more useful ones, and directed
to the true end of knowledge as "a rich storehouse for the glory of the
Creator and the relief of man's estate." The work was in fact the
preface to a series of treatises which were intended to be built up into
an "Instauratio Magna," which its author was never destined to complete,
and of which the parts that we