Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/30

Rh, about sixteen years of age, (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to his dying day."

This early interest in the physics of sound, a subject which always attracted Bacon, is as significant as the youthful judgment on the unfruitfulness of the philosophy of Aristotle. The judgment makes the distinction between philosophy embracing all knowledge, as the ancients understood it and as indeed it does, and science, for which Bacon's term "natural history" is now old-fashioned. With Bacon, essentially a literary man, science was to lose its moorings to letters.

At the end of three years Bacon left Cambridge, and at the age of about sixteen and a half years, was entered into the Society of the "Ancients" of Gray's Inn. Almost immediately after he had begun the study of law, an opportunity offered for him to travel and see the world. Sir Amias Paulet, who was sent to France as the Queen's ambassador, in 1576, invited Francis Bacon to go with him as a member of his household. Dr. Rawley says, "He was after awhile held fit to be entrusted with some message or advertisement to the Queen; which having performed with great approbation, he returned Rh