, and enter into the ship of the
Church. Neither will the stars of philosophy, which have hitherto so
nobly shone on us, any longer give us their light."

The certainty indeed of conclusions on such subjects was out of harmony
with the grandest feature of Bacon's work, his noble confession of the
liability of every enquirer to error. It was his especial task to warn
men against the "vain shows" of knowledge which had so long hindered any
real advance in it, the "idols" of the Tribe, the Den, the Forum, and
the Theatre, the errors which spring from the systematizing spirit which
pervades all masses of men, or from individual idiosyncrasies, or from
the strange power of words and phrases over the mind, or from the
traditions of the past. Nor were the claims of theology easily to be
reconciled with the position which he was resolute to assign to natural
science. "Through all those ages," Bacon says, "wherein men of genius or
learning principally or even moderately flourished, the smallest part of
human industry has been spent on natural philosophy, though this ought
to be esteemed as the great mother of the sciences; for all the rest, if
torn from this root, may perhaps be polished and formed for use, but can
receive little increase." It was by the adoption of the method of
inductive enquiry which physical science was to make its own, and by
basing enquiry on grounds which physical science could supply, that the
moral sciences, ethics and politics, could alone make any real advance.
"Let none expect any great promotion of the sciences, especially in
their effective part, unless natural philosophy be drawn out to
particular sciences; and, again, unless these particular sciences be
brought back again to natural philosophy. From this defect it is that
astronomy, optics, music, many mechanical arts, and (what seems
stranger) even moral and civil philosophy and logic rise but little
above the foundations, and only skim over the varieties and surfaces of
things." It was this lofty conception of the position and destiny of
natural science which Bacon was the first to impress upon mankind at
large. The age was one in which knowledge was passing to fields of
enquiry which had till then been unknown, in which Kepler and Galileo
were creating modern astronomy, in which Descartes was revealing the
laws of motion, and Harvey the circulation of the blood. But to the mass
of men this great change was all but imperceptible; and it was the