he had gone to the imaginary worlds he had so
wickedly feigned.

This vigorous but spasmodic determination of the Church to defend
herself was not without effect. It enabled her to hold fast the timid,
the time-servers, the superficial. [Sidenote: Lord Bacon. Rejects the
Copernican doctrine.] Among such may be mentioned Lord Bacon, who never
received the Copernican system. With the audacity of ignorance, he
presumed to criticize what he did not understand, and, with a superb
conceit, disparaged the great Copernicus. He says, "In the system of
Copernicus there are many and grave difficulties; for the threefold
motion with which he encumbers the earth is a serious inconvenience, and
the separation of the sun from the planets, with which he has so many
affections in common, is likewise a harsh step; and the introduction of
so many immovable bodies in nature, as when he makes the sun and stars
immovable, the bodies which are peculiarly lucid and radiant, and his
making the moon adhere to the earth in a sort of epicycle, and some
other things which he assumes, are proceedings which mark a man who
thinks nothing of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided
his calculations turn out well." The more closely we examine the
writings of Lord Bacon, the more unworthy does he seem to have been of
the great reputation which has been awarded to him. The popular delusion
to which he owes so much originated at a time when the history of
science was unknown. They who first brought him into notice knew nothing
of the old school of Alexandria. This boasted founder of a new
philosophy could not comprehend, and would not accept, the greatest of
all scientific doctrines when it was plainly set before his eyes.

It has been represented that the invention of the true method of
physical science was an amusement of Bacon's hours of relaxation from
the more laborious studies of law and duties of a court. His chief
admirers have been persons of a literary turn, who have an idea that
scientific discoveries are accomplished by a mechanico-mental operation.
[Sidenote: The practical uselessness of his philosophy.] Bacon never
produced any great practical result himself, no great physicist has ever
made any use of his method. He has had the same to do with the
development of modern science that the inventor of the orrery has had to
do with the discovery of the mechanism of the world. Of all the
important physical discoveries, there is not