Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/370

 Bacon 'Historia Ventorum' to consider the direction of the winds in connection with temperature and aqueous phenomena, on which Humboldt highly compliments him as having thereby laid the foundations of a theory of the currents of the atmosphere.

The philosophical opinions of Bacon, as distinguished from his teaching on logic and the method of science, are mainly to be found in the 'De Augmentis Scientiarum.' It is the object of this book, which was an expansion of two earlier works, the 'Advancement of Learning,' already mentioned, and the 'Descriptio Globi Intellectualis' (a fragment written about 1612, but first published by Gruter in 1653), to note the divisions, the existing condition, and the deficiencies of the various sciences. The 'De Augmentis' abounds in fine thoughts and felicitous suggestions, and the classification of the sciences, which, with comparatively slight alterations, was adopted by De'Alembert in his preliminary discourse to the French 'Encyclopédie,' was the first considerable attempt of the kind, and still remains, notwithstanding all its faults, a remarkable production. 'The object of philosophy,' he there says, 'is threefold — God, Nature, and Man; as there are likewise three kinds of rays — direct, refracted, and; reflected. For nature strikes the understanding with a ray direct; God, by reason of the unequal medium (namely, his creatures), with a ray refracted; man, as shown and exhibited to himself, with a ray reflected.' These three branches of philosophy, however, all meet in one trunk, the Philosophia Prima, which is, as it were, the common parent of the particular sciences, embodying those axioms and discussing those problems which are not peculiar to any one science, but find their place in all knowledge alike.

On what, for want of a better name, may be called ontological or metaphysical questions, his ordinary attitude is that of a disinterested if not a contemptuous silence. Bacon lived too early or too late to take any serious part in these metaphysical discussions. In their scholastic form they had become discredited, and their new form, under which they were to exercise so much of the best thought of the two succeeding centuries, had not yet been impressed on them by the genius of Descartes. Bacon assumes the ordinary distinction of mind and matter, a universe of objects to be known and a thinking subject capable, with due care and discipline, of attaining to a knowledge of them, without apparently troubling himself as to the ulterior questions, what is knowledge, how can I become conscious of that which is not myself, and what are the ultimate meaning and relation of the two terms in this comparison,

On questions of psychology, as distinct from metaphysics, we find a fair number of passages in Bacon's writings. The most important perhaps are those in which, following Telesius, the celebrated philosopher of Cosenza (1509-1588), whose works seem greatly to have interested him, he asserts the duality of the human soul. Man, according to this doctrine (which is stated most fully in De Augmentis, iv. 3), has two souls, one peculiar to himself, the rational soul which he derives from the breath of God, the other, shared by him in common with the brutes, the irrational soul, which comes from 'the wombs of the elements.' It is, in this connection, worth noting that Bacon makes the profound remark that the origins of the mental facilities should be handled, and that psychologically or physiologically ('idque physice'), a work towards which, as he says, nothing of importance has yet been done.

Bacon's moral philosophy, which is mainly contained in the seventh book of the 'De Augmentis,' has, perhaps, hardly received the attention which it deserves. As logic treats of the intellect, ethics treat of the will. 'The will is governed by right reason, seduced by apparent good: having for its spurs the passions, for its ministers the organs and voluntary motions.' Ethics may be divided into two principal doctrines, one theoretical, treating of the exemplar or image of good, the other (to which he gives the fanciful title of the Georgics of the mind) practical, laying down rules for the regulation and culture of the various parts of our nature, so as to bring them into conformity with the image of good, when found. Of this practical side of ethics he complains that, for the most part, it has been passed over, as not enabling men to display the point of their wit or the power of their eloquence. On the theoretical side, he finds fault with previous philosophers for not having carried their inquiries deeper, by searching for the roots of good and evil. He then endeavours to 'open and cleanse the fountains of morality' by examining its fundamental conception of good. Good, he finds, is either public or private, and the appetite to both these kinds of good is native to the human mind, and, indeed, to everything which exists. 'There is formed and imprinted in everything an appetite towards two natures of good: to one nature, inasmuch as everything is a whole in itself; to the other, inasmuch as it is a part of a greater whole. And this latter nature is more worthy and powerful than the former, as it tends to the 