one which shows that its
author made it by the Baconian instrument. Newton never seems to have
been aware that he was under any obligation to Bacon. Archimedes, and
the Alexandrians, and the Arabians, and Leonardo da Vinci did very well
before he was born; the discovery of America by Columbus and the
circumnavigation by Magellan can hardly be attributed to him, yet they
were the consequences of a truly philosophical reasoning. But the
investigation of nature is an affair of genius, not of rules. No man can
invent an organon for writing tragedies and Epic poems. Bacon's system
is, in it own terms, an idol of the theatre. It would scarcely guide a
man to a solution of the riddle of Aelia Laelia Crispis, or to that of the
charade of Sir Hilary.

[Sidenote: His scientific errors.] Few scientific pretenders have made
more mistakes than Lord Bacon. He rejected the Copernican system, and
spoke insolently of its great author; he undertook to criticise
adversely Gilbert's treatise "De Magnete;" he was occupied in the
condemnation of any investigation of final causes, while Harvey was
deducing the circulation of the blood from Aquapendente's discovery of
the valves in the veins; he was doubtful whether instruments were of any
advantage, while Galileo was investigating the heavens with the
telescope. Ignorant himself of every branch of mathematics, he presumed
that they were useless in science, but a few years before Newton
achieved by their aid his immortal discoveries. It is time that the
sacred name of philosophy should be severed from its long connexion with
that of one who was a pretender in science, a time-serving politician,
an insidious lawyer, a corrupt judge, a treacherous friend, a bad man.

[Sidenote: Adoption of the Copernican doctrine.] But others were not so
obtuse as Bacon. Gilbert, one of the best of the early English
experimentalists, an excellent writer on magnetism, adopted the views of
Copernicus. Milton, in "Paradise Lost," set forth in language such as he
only could use the objections to the Ptolemaic, and the probabilities of
the Copernican system. Some of the more liberal ecclesiastics gave their
adhesion. Bishop Wilkins not only presented it in a very popular way,
but also made some sensible suggestions explanatory of the supposed
contradictions of the new theory to the Holy Scriptures. It was,
however, among geometricians, as Napier, Briggs, Horrox, that it met
with its best support. On the continent t