of students, however exacting.

Far too much credit has been attributed to Bacon, in popular estimation,
as the author of a system upon which the modern progress of science is
based.[A] Whatever his system may have been, it is certain that it has
had little direct influence upon the advance of knowledge. But, perhaps,
too little credit has been given to Bacon as a man whose breadth and
power of thought and amplitude of soul enabled a spirit that has at once
stimulated its progress and elevated its disciples. That Bacon believed
himself to have invented a system wholly new admits of no doubt; but it
is doubtful whether he ever definitely arranged this system in his own
mind. And it is a curious and interesting fact, and one illustrative, at
least, of the imperfection of Bacon's exposition of his own method, that
Mr. Ellis and Mr. Spedding, the two most conscientious investigators of
Bacon's thought, should have arrived at different conclusions in regard
to the distinctive peculiarities of the Baconian philosophy. Mr.
Spedding, in his very interesting preface to the "Parasceve," suggests,
since his own and Mr. Ellis's conclusions, though different, do not
appear irreconcilable, "whether there be not room for a third solution,
more complete than either, as including both." Both he and Mr. Ellis
set out from the position, that "the philosophy which Bacon meant to
announce was in some way essentially different, not only from any that
had been before, but from any that has been since,"--a position very
much opposed to the popular opinion. "The triumph of his [Bacon's]
principles of scientific investigation," said, not long since, a writer
in the "Quarterly Review," whose words may be taken as representative of
the common ideas on the matter, "has made it unnecessary to revert to
the reasoning by which they were established."[B] But the truth seems
to be, that the merits of Bacon belong, as Mr. Ellis well says, "to the
spirit rather than to the positive precepts of his philosophy." Nor does
it appear that Bacon himself, although he indulged the highest hopes and
felt the securest confidence in the results of his perfected system,
supposed that he had given to it that perfection which was required. In
the "De Augmentis Scientiarum," published in 1623, two years and a half
before his death, he says: "I am preparing and laboring with all my
might to make the mind of man, by help of art, a match for the nature
of things, (_ut mens