Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/32

16 ," writes Bacon, "of divine and human things arise not only vain philosophy, but also heretical religion. For this reason it is wholesome to employ a sober understanding, and render unto faith that only which is faith's." The accent of modern thought is easily discernible in this utterance of Bacon, who, admitting with unconscious reluctance that he cannot use his new implement of induction upon truth revealed, thereupon cuts into and curtails the supersensible region wherever possible. "Myself," he naïvely says, "am like the miller of Huntingdon, that was wont to pray for peace amongst the willows; for while the winds blew, the wind-mills wrought, and the water-mill was less customed. So I see that controversies of religion must hinder the advancement of science." A dualistic philosophy, it is true, may be indefinitely more comprehensive and a truer interpretation of the world than a monism obtained by a narrow determination to make everything fit into its Procrustes' bed. Bacon's thought is to be preferred to any system based upon reason, as he and his contemporaries understood the term, to the exclusion of faith, or upon faith to the exclusion of reason. Yet it is impossible to rest satisfied with his genial acceptance of what he believed to be contradictories. The principle of evolution, while insisting upon differences in faculties, undertakes to prove that all faculties are organically united.

Not only into the region of knowledge, but into that of action also, this principle of the organic relation of faculties introduces unity. Hence it changes the theory concerning appetite and will. It has been held that man is the arena of opposing functions, one of which is desire or inclination and the other will or duty ; and that it is the duty of the voluntary agent to keep down the Hydra of passion. It is not necessary to locate this venerable but still current view. It is enough to say that in our faculties, commonly called moral, may be