Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/371

 Bacon  of a more general form. Let the former be named 'individual or self good,' the latter 'good of communion.' Those who are acquainted with the subsequent development of moral philosophy in England will not fail to find in this sentence the germ of one of the leading ideas in the systems of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and many other English moralists.

To the fundamental questions of morals, what makes an action right, How do I know that it is right, and Why should I do a right action rather than a wrong one, Bacon supplies no direct answers. Nor did he probably put these questions to himself in this direct manner. But if I may venture, from the fragments of a system which he has left us, to construct answers such as I think he would have given, had the questions been put to him, I would suggest that he might have expressed his views much as follows. An action is right which is good — good, that is to say, either for ourselves or for others, and, wherever the good of self or of a smaller aggregate conflicts with that of a larger one, that action will, generally speaking, be right which promotes the good of the community or of the larger community of the two. I know an action to be right, partly by my reason exercised on its eftects and on the effects of actions similar to it, partly also by that 'inward instinct, according to the law of conscience, which is a relic of man's ancient purity, and partly too by the words of God's Revelation. What impels me to do an action when I know it to be right, is partly obedience to the will of God, hope of His rewards, and fear of His punishments; partly a natural appetite, impressed on me as on all other objects, to seek good, and to seek the greater good rather than the lesser. That two or more inconsistent modes of thought are implied in these answers I am aware. But Bacon and his generation had not yet reached that stage in the history of ethical speculation when thought on these subjects was clear and consistent. Bacon still regarded ethics as the 'handmaid' of theology. Hobbes was the first English writer who treated ethics as an independent science. But he had been anticipated in this respect by Grotius, whose 'De Jure Belli et Pacis' was published as early as 1625.

The title of founder or father of experimental philosophy, so often ascribed to him by his admirers and so often criticised by his detractors, expresses the nature of Bacon's influence in a rough and perhaps a somewhat exaggerated as well as a somewhat inadequate form, but one which is in the main true.

Bacon called men as with the voice of a herald to lay themselves alongside of nature, to study her ways, and imitate her processes. To use his own homely simile, he rang the bell which called the other wits together He insisted, both by example and precept, on the importance of experiment as well as observation. Nature, like a witness, when put to the torture, would reveal her secrets. In both these ways Bacon recalled men to the study of facts, and though, in the first instance, he had mainly in view the facts of external nature, the influence of his teaching soon extended itself, as he undoubtedly purposed that it should do, to the facts of mind, conduct, and society.

In order to set men free to study facts, it was necessary to deliver them from the pernicious subjection to authority to which they had so long been enslaved. Here and there throughout the middle ages a solitary thinker like Roger Bacon may have asserted his independence, and, during the century preceding Bacon's time, the murmurs of discontent had been becomingloud and frequent, but it required a voice, like that of the author of the 'Great Instauration,' effectually to awaken men from their slumber. Hardly less important than deliverance from the bondage of authority was the emancipation of reason from the bewitching enchantments of imagination. 'Hypotheses non fingo' was a maxim which Newton inherited directly from the teaching of Bacon. And, though the reaction against hypothesis was carried much too far, the warning was one which, in his own time, was sorely needed.

Bacon insisted on the necessity of a logic of induction, effecting for the premisses what the old logic, the logic of deduction, effected for the conclusion. And to this logic of induction he himself made no contemptible contributions. That our instances require to be selected and not merely accumulated, was a very true and a very needful lesson which he was never weary of repeating. And, surely, in this maxim consists the whole gist of the inductive logic. On what principles we shall select our instances, and by what means we shall satisfy ourselves of their sufficiency, are other and further questions, confessedly most difficult to answer, on which we could hardly expect much detailed or permanently useful information from a pioneer in this method of inquiry. And yet Bacon is very full on at least the first of these questions, and much of what he says has even still a value for the student.

Nor must we forget the hopefulness of Bacon as an important element in his influence. He stood, like a prophet, on the