RIGHTLY FORMED.' Who did that very thing? Who was it that stood on the
spot and put that design into execution?

But this is not all; this is only the beginning of the observation and
study of _differences_. For he would have also included in it, 'those
impressions of nature which are otherwise _imposed_ upon by the mind,
by the SEX, AGE, COUNTRY, STATE OF HEALTH, MAKE OF BODY, as of beauty
and deformity, and THE LIKE, which are inherent and not external:' and
more, he will have included in it--in these _practical Ethics_ he will
have included--'POINTS OF FORTUNE,' and the differences that they
make; he will have _all the differences_ that this creature exhibits,
under any conditions, put down; he will have his whole nature, so far
as his history is able to show it, on his table; and not as it is
exhibited accidentally, or spontaneously merely, but under the test of
a studious inquiry, and essay; he will apply to it the trials and
vexations of Art, and wring out its last confession. This is the
practical doctrine of this species; this is what the author we have
here in hand, calls the _science_ of it, or the beginning of its
science. This is one of the _parts of science_ which he says is
wanting. Let us follow his running glimpse of the points here, then,
and see whether it is extant here, too, and whether there is anything
to justify all this preparation in bringing it in, and all this
exceeding marvelling at the want of it.

'And again _those differences_ which proceed from FORTUNE, as
SOVEREIGNTY, NOBILITY, OBSCURE BIRTH, RICHES, WANT, MAGISTRACY,
PRIVATENESS, PROSPERITY, ADVERSITY, constant fortune, variable
fortune, rising _per saltum, per gradus_, and the like.' These are
articles that he puts down for points in his _table of natural
history_, points for the collection of instances; this is the tabular
preparation for induction here; for he does not conclude his precepts
on the popular, miscellaneous, accidental history. That will do well
enough for books. It won't do to get out axioms of practice from such
loose material. They have to ring with the proof of another kind of
condensation. All _his_ history is artificial, prepared history more
_select_ and _subtle_ and _fit_ than the other kind, he
says,--prepared on purpose; perhaps we shall come across his tables,
some day, with these very points on them, filled in with the
observations of one, so qualified by the truth of direction to make
them 'severe'. It would not be strange, for he gives us to understand
that he is not altogether idle in this part of his Instauration, and
that he does not think it enough to lay out work for others, without
giving an occasional specimen of his own, of the thing which he notes
as deficient, and proposes to have done, so that there may be no
mistake about it as to what it really is; for he appears to think
there is some danger of that. Even here, he produces a few
illustrations of his meaning, that it may appear the better what is,
and whether it be extant.

'And therefore we see, that _Plautus_ maketh it a wonder to see an OLD
man beneficent. _St. Paul_ concludeth that severity of _discipline_
was to be used to the _Cretans_, ("increpa eos dure"), upon _the
disposition_ of THEIR COUNTRY. "Cretenses semper mendaces, malæ
bestize, ventres pigri." _Sallust_ noteth that it is usual with KINGS
to desire _contradictories_; "Sed plerumque, regiæ voluntates, ut
vehementes sunt sic mobiles saepeque ipsæ sibi adversæ." _Tacitus_
observeth how rarely THE RAISING OF THE FORTUNE mendeth the
disposition. "Solus Vespasianus mutatus in melius." _Pindar_ maketh an
observation that great and sudden fortune for the most part defeateth
men. So _the Psalm_ showeth it more easy to keep a measure in the
enjoying of fortune, than in the increase of fortune; "Divitiæ si
affluant nolite cor apponere."' '_These observations, and the
like_,'--what book is it that has so many of '_the like_'?--'I deny
not but are touched a little by Aristotle _as in passage_ in his
_Rhetorics_, and are handled in some scattered discourses.' One would
think it was another philosopher, with pretensions not at all
inferior, but professedly very much, and altogether superior to those
of Aristotle, whose short-comings were under criticism here; 'but they
(_these observations_) were never INCORPORATED _into moral
philosophy_, to which they do ESSENTIALLY appertain, as THE KNOWLEDGE
of THE DIVERSITY of GROUND and MOULDS doth to _agriculture_, and the
knowledge of the DIVERSITY of COMPLEXIONS and CONSTITUTIONS doth to
the _physician_; except'--note it--'except we mean to follow the
indiscretion of empirics, which minister _the same medicines to all
patients_.'

Truly this does appear to give us some vistas of a _science_, and a
'pretty one,' for these particulars and illustrations are here, that
we may see the better what it is, and whether it be extant. That is
the question. And it happens singularly enough, to be a question just
as pertinent now, as it was when the philosopher put it on his paper,
two hundred and fifty years ago.

_There_ is the first point, then, in the table of this scientific
history, with its subdivisions and articulations; and here is the
second, not less essential. 'Another article of this knowledge is the
inquiry touching THE AFFECTIONS; for, as in medicining the body,'--and
it is a practical science we are on here; it is the cure of the mind,
and not a word for show,--'as in medicining the body, it is in order,
_first_, to know the divers complexions and constitutions; secondly,
the _diseases_; and, lastly, the _cures_; so in medicining of the
mind,--after knowledge of the _divers characters_ of _men's natures_,
it followeth, in order, to know the diseases and infirmities of the
mind, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of the
affections.' And we shall find, under the head of the medicining of
the body, some things on the subject of medicine in general, which
could be better said _there_ than _here_, because the wrath of
professional dignitaries,--the eye of the 'basilisk,' was not perhaps
quite so terrible in that quarter then, as it was in some others. For
though 'the Doctors' in that department, did manage, in the dark ages,
to possess themselves of certain weapons of their own, which are said
to have proved, on the whole, sufficiently formidable, they were not,
as it happened, armed by the State as the others then were; and it was
usually discretionary with the patient to avail himself, or not, of
their drugs, and receipts, and surgeries; whereas, in the diseased and
suffering soul, no such discretion was tolerated. The drugs were
indeed compounded by the State in person, and the executive stood by,
axe in hand, to see that they were taken, accompanying them with such
other remedies as the case might seem to require; the most serious
operations being constantly performed without ever taking 'the sense'
of the patient.

So we must not be surprised to find that this author who writes under
such liabilities ventures to bring out the pith of his trunk of
sciences,--that which sciences have in common,--the doctrine of the
nature of things,--what he calls '_prima philosophia_,' when his
learned sock is on--a little more strongly and fully in that branch of
it, with a glance this way, with a distinct intimation that it is
common to the two, and applies here as well. There, too, he complains
of the ignorance of anatomy, which is just the complaint he has been
making here, and that, for want of it, 'they quarrel many times with
the humours which are not in fault, the fault being in the very frame
and mechanic of the part, which cannot be removed by medicine
_alterative_, but must be _accommodated_ and palliated by diet and
medicines _familiar_.' There, too, he reports the lack of medicinal
history, and gives directions for supplying it, just such directions
as he gives here, but that which makes the astounding difference in
the reading of these reports to-day, is, that the one has been
accepted, and the other has not; nay, that the one has been _read_,
and the other has not: for how else can we account for the fact, that
men of learning, in our time, come out and tell us deliberately, not
merely that this man's place in history, is the place of one who
devoted his genius to the promotion of the personal convenience and
bodily welfare of men, but, that it is the place of one who gave up
the nobler nature, deliberately, on principle, and after examination
and reflection, as a thing past help from science, as a thing lying
out of the range of philosophy? How else comes it, that the critic
to-day tells us, dares to tell us, that this leader's word to the new
ages of advancement is, that there is no scientific advancement to be
looked for _here_?--how else could he tell us, with such vivid detail
of illustration, that this innovator and proposer of advancement,
never intended his Novum Organum to be applied to the _cure_ of the
moral diseases, to the subduing of the WILL and the AFFECTIONS,--but
thought, because the old philosophy had failed, there was no use in
trying the new;--because the philosophy of words, and preconceptions,
had failed, the philosophy of observation and application, the
philosophy of ideas as they are in nature, and not as they are in the
mind of man merely, the philosophy of _laws_, must fail also;--because
ARGUMENT had failed, ART was hopeless;--because syllogisms, based on
popular, unscientific notions were of no effect, _practical axioms_
based on the scientific knowledge of natural causes, and on their
specific developments, were going to be of none effect also? If the
passages which are now under consideration, had been so much as
_read_, how could a learned man, in our time, tell us that the author
of the 'Advancement of Learning' had come with any such despairful
word as that to us,--to tell us that the new science he was
introducing upon this Globe theatre, the science of _laws_ in nature,
offered to _Divinity_ and Morality no aid,--no ministry, no service in
the _cure of the mind_? And the reason why they have not been read,
the reason why this part of the 'Advancement of Learning,' which is
the principal part of it in the intention of its author, _has_ been
overlooked hitherto is, that the Art of Tradition, which is described,
here--the art of the Tradition, and delivery of knowledges which are
foreign from opinions received, was in the hand of its inventor, and
able to fulfil his pleasure.

After the knowledge of the divers characters of men's natures then,
the next article of this inquiry is the DISEASES and INFIRMITIES of
the MIND, which are no other than the perturbations and distempers of
THE AFFECTIONS. For as the ancient politicians in popular estates were
wont to compare the people to the sea, and the _orators_ to the winds,
because the sea would of itself be calm and quiet, if the winds did
not move and trouble it; _so_ the _people would be peaceable_ and
_tractable_, if the _seditious orators did not set them in working and
agitation_; so it may be fitly said, that the mind, in the nature
thereof, would be _temperate_ and _stayed_, if _the affections_, as
winds, did not put it into tumult and perturbation. And _here, again_,
I find, _strange as before_, that _Aristotle_ should have written
divers volumes of _Ethics_, and never handled THE AFFECTIONS, which is
the _principal subject thereof_; and yet, in his _Rhetorics_, where
they are considered but _collaterally_, and in a second degree, as
they may be moved by speech, he findeth place for them, and handleth
them well _for the quantity_, but where their _true place_ is, he
_permitteth_ them. (Very much the method of procedure adopted by the
philosopher who composes that criticism; who also finds a place for
the affections in passing, where they are considered collaterally, and
in a second degree, and for the quantity, he handleth them well, and
who knows how to bring his Rhetorics to bear on them, as well as the
politicians in popular estates did of old, though for a different end;
but where their true place is, he, too, _permitteth_ them; and, in his
Novum Organum, he keeps so clear of them, and _permits_ them so fully,
that the critics tell us he never meant it should touch them.) 'For it
is not his disputations about pleasure and pain that can satisfy this
inquiry, no more than he that should _generally_ handle the nature of
light can be said to handle the nature of _colours_; for pleasure and
pain are to the particular affections as light is to the particular
colours.' Is not this a man for particulars, then? And when he comes
to the practical doctrine,--to _the art_--to the knowledge, which is
_power_,--will he not have particulars here, as well as in those other
arts which are based on them? Will he not have particulars here, as
well as in chemistry and natural philosophy, and botany and
mineralogy; or, when it comes to practice here, will he be content,
after all, with the old line of argument, and elegant disquisition,
with the old generalities and subtleties of definition, which required
no collection of particulars, which were independent of observation,
or for which the popular accidental observation sufficed? 'Better
travels, I suppose, had the Stoics taken in this argument, as far as I
can gather by that which we have at secondhand. _But yet_ it is like
it was after their manner, rather in subtlety of definitions, which,
in a subject of this nature, are _but curiosities_, than _in_ ACTIVE
_and_ AMPLE DESCRIPTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS. So, likewise, I find some
particular writings of _an elegant nature_, touching some of the
affections; as of anger, of comfort upon adverse accidents, of
tenderness of countenance, and others.' And such writings were not
confined to the ancients. Some of us have seen elegant writings of
this nature, published under the name of the philosopher who composes
this criticism, and suggests the possibility of essays of a more
lively and _experimental_ kind, and who seems to think that the
treatment should be _ample_, as well as _active_.

'_But_ the POETS and WRITERS of HISTORY are the best _Doctors_ of
_this knowledge_, where we may find, painted forth with great _life_,
_how affections are kindled and incited_, and _how pacified_ and
_refrained_;'--certainly, that is the kind of learning we want
here:--'and how, again, contained from _act_ and _further
degree_'--very useful knowledge, one would say, and it is a pity it
should not be 'diffused,' but it is not every poet who can be said to
have it;--'_how_ they disclose themselves--_how_ they work--how they
vary;'--this is the science of them clearly, _whoever_ has it;--'how
they gather and fortify--how they are _enwrapped one within
another_;'--yes, there is one Poet, one Doctor of this science, in
whom we can find _that_ also;--'and how they do fight and encounter
one with another, and other like _particularities_.' We all know what
Poet it is, to whose lively and ample descriptions of the affections
and passions--to whose _particularities_--that description best
applies, and in what age of the world he lived; but no one, who has
not first studied them as scientific exhibitions, can begin to
perceive the force--the exclusive force--of the reference. 'Amongst
the which, this last is of special _use_ in MORAL and CIVIL matters:
_how_, I say, to _set affection against affection_, and to master one
by another, even as we used to hunt beast with beast, and fly bird
with bird, which otherwise, percase, we could not so easily recover.'
The Poet has not only exhibited this with very voluminous and lively
details, but he, too, has concluded his precept;--

  'One fire burns out another's burning'--
  'One desperate grief cures with another's languish'--
  'Take thou some new infection to thine eye,
  And the rank poison of the old will die.'
                     _Romeo and Juliet_.

  'As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity;
  And pity to the _general wrong of Rome_
  Hath, done this deed _on Cæsar.'
                                _Julius Cæsar_.

for it is the _larger_ form, which is the worthier, in that new
department of mixed mathematics which this philosopher was
cultivating.

  'One fire drives out one fire, one nail one nail:
  Rights by rights fouler, strength by strengths do fail.'
                                        _Coriolanus_.

And for history of _cases_, see the same author in Hamlet and other
plays. [This philosopher's prose not unfrequently contains the key of
the poetic paraphrase; and the true reading of the line, which has
occasioned so much perplexity to the critics, may, perhaps, be
suggested by this connection--'to set affection against affection, and
to master one by another, even as we hunt beast with beast, and fly
bird with bird.']

CHAPTER V.

THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.--ALTERATION.

          Hast thou not learn'd me how
  To make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so,
  That our great king himself doth woo me oft
  For my confections? Having thus far proceeded,
  (Unless thou think'st me devilish,) is't not meet
  That I did amplify my judgment in
  Other conclusions?             _Cymbeline_.

Thus far, it is the science of Man, _as he is_, that is propounded. It
is a scientific history of the Mind and its diseases, built up from
particulars, as other scientific histories are; and having disposed,
in this general manner, of that which must be dealt with by way of
_application_, those points of nature and fortune, which he puts down
as the basis and conditions to _which all our_ WORK _is limited and
tied_, we come now to that which IS within our power--to those points
which we can deal with by way of ALTERATION, and not of _application_
merely; and yet points which are operating perpetually on the human
character, changing the will and appetite, and altering the conduct,
by laws not less sure than those which operate in the occult processes
of nature, and determine differences behind the scene, or out of the
range of our volition.

And if after having duly weighed the hints we have already received of
the importance of the subject, we do not any longer suffer ourselves
to be put off the track, or bewildered by the first rhetorical effect
of the sentence in which these agencies are introduced to our
attention,--if we look at that rapid series of words, as something
else than the points of a period, if we stop long enough to recover
from the confusion which a mere string of names, a catalogue or table
of contents, crowded into single sentence, will, of necessity,
create,--if we stop long enough to see that each one of these words is
a point in the table of a new science, we shall perceive at once, that
after having made all this large allowance, this _new_ allowance for
that which is _without_ our power, there is still a very, very large
margin of operation, and discovery, and experiment left; that there is
still a large scope of _alteration_ left--alteration in man as he is.
For we shall find that these forces which _are_ within our power, are
the very ones which are making, and always have been making, man what
he is. Running our eye along this table of forces and supplies, with
that understanding of its uses, we shall perceive at once, that we
have the most ample material here, if it were but scientifically
handled; untried, inexhaustible means and appliances for raising man
to the height of his pattern and original, to the stature of a perfect
man.

It is not the material of this regimen of growth and advancement, it
is not the Materia Medica that is wanting,--it is the science of it.
It is the natural history of these forces, with the precepts
scientifically concluded on them, that is wanting. The appliances are
here; the scientific application of them remains to be made, and until
these have been tried, it is too early to pronounce on the case; until
these have been tried, just as other precepts of the new science have
been, it is too soon to say that that science of nature,--that
knowledge of laws--that foreknowledge of effects, which operates so
remedially in all other departments of the human life, is without
application, is of no efficiency here; until these have been tried it
is too soon to say that the science of nature is _not_ what the man
who brought it in on this Globe theatre _declared it_ to _be_, the
handmaid of Divinity, the intelligent handmaid and minister of
religion, to whose discretion in the economy of Providence, much, much
has evidently been left.

And it was no assumption in this man to claim, as he did claim, a
divine and providential authority for this procedure. And those who
intelligently fulfil their parts in this great enterprise for man's
relief, and the Creator's glory, have just as clear a right to say, as
those of old who fulfilled with such means and lights, and
inspirations as their time gave them, their part in the plan of the
human advancement, 'it is God who worketh in us.'

'Now come we to those points which _are_ within our command, and have
_force_ and _operation_ upon the mind, to _affect the will and
appetite_, and to alter manners: wherein they ought to have handled
CUSTOM, EXERCISE, HABIT, EDUCATION, EXAMPLE, IMITATION, EMULATION,
COMPANY, FRIENDS, PRAISE, REPROOF, EXHORTATION, FAME, LAWS, BOOKS,
STUDIES: these, as they have determinate use in moralities, from these
_the mind_ SUFFERETH; and of these are such receipts and regiments
compounded and described, as may serve to recover or preserve the
health and good estate of the mind, as far as pertaineth to human
medicine; of which number we will insist upon some one or two, _as an
example of the rest_, because it _were too long_ to prosecute _all_.'
But the careful reader perceives in that which follows, that the
treatment of this so vital subject, though all that the author has to
say upon it _here_, is condensed into these brief paragraphs, is not
by any means so miscellaneous, as this introduction and 'the _first_
cogitation' on it, might, perhaps, have prepared him to find it.

To be permitted to handle these forces openly, in the form of literary
report, and recommendation, would, no doubt, have seemed to this
inventor of sciences, in his day no small privilege. But there was
another kind of experiment in them which he aspired to. He wished to
take these forces in hand more directly, and compound recipes, with
them, and other 'regiments' and cures. For by nature and carefullest
study he was a Doctor in this degree and kind--and a man thus fitted,
inevitably seeks his sphere. Very unlearned in this science of human
nature which he has left us,--much wanting in analysis must he be, who
can find in the persistent determination of such a man to possess
himself of places of trust and authority, only the vulgar desire for
courtly distinction, and eagerness for the paraphernalia of office.
This man was not wanting in any of the common natural sentiments; the
private and particular nature was large in him, and that good to which
he gives the preference in his comparison of those exclusive aims and
enjoyments, is 'the good which is _active_, and not that which is
_passive_'; both as it tends to secure that individual perpetuity
which is the especial craving of men thus specially endowed, and on
account of 'that affection for variety and _proceeding_' which is also
common to men, and specially developed in such men,--an affection
which the goods of the passive nature are not able to satisfy. 'But in
_enterprises_, pursuits and purposes of life, there is much variety
whereof men are sensible with pleasure in their inceptions,
progressions, recoils, re-integration, approaches and attainings to
their ends.' And he gives us a long insight into his own particular
nature and history in that sentence. He is careful to distinguish this
kind of good from the good of society, 'though in some cases it hath
an incident to it. For that gigantine state of mind which possesseth
the _troublers_ of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and _infinite
other in smaller model_, who would have all men happy or unhappy, as
they were their friends or enemies, _and would give form to the world
according to their own humours_, which is the true _theomachy_,
pretendeth and aspireth to _active good_ though it _recedeth farthest_
from that _good of society_, which we have determined to be _the
greater_.'

In no troubler or benefactor of the world, on the largest scale, in no
theomachist of any age, whether intelligent and benevolent, or
demoniacal and evil, had this nature which he here defines so clearly,
ever been more largely incorporated, or more effectively armed. But in
him this tendency to personal aggrandisement was overlooked, and
subordinated by the larger nature,--by the intelligence which includes
the whole, and is able to weigh the part with it, and by the
sentiments which enforce or anticipate intelligent decision.

Both these facts must be taken into the account, if we would read his
history fairly. For he composed for himself a plan of living, in which
this naturally intense desire for an individual perpetuity and renown,
and this love of action and enterprise for its own sake, was sternly
subordinated to the noblest ends of living, to the largest good of his
kind, to the divine and eternal law of duty, to the relief of man's
estate and the Creator's glory. And without making any claim on his
behalf, which it would be unworthy to make for one to whom the truth
was dearer than the opinions of men; it may be asserted, that whatever
errors of judgment or passion, we may find, or think we find in him,
these ends were with him predominant, and shaped his course.

He was not naturally a man of _letters_, but a man of action,
intensely impelled to action, and it was because he was forbidden to
fulfil his enterprise in person, because he had to write letters of
direction to those to whom he was compelled to entrust it, because he
had to write letters to the future, and leave himself and his will in
letters, that letters became, in his hands, _practical_. He, too, knew
what it was to be compelled 'to unpack his heart in words' when deeds
should have expressed it.

But even words are forbidden him here. After all the pains he has
taken to show us what the deficiency is which he is reporting here,
and what the art and science which he is proposing, he can only put
down a few paragraphs on the subject, casually, as it were, in
passing. Of all these forces which have operation on the mind, and
with which scientific appliances for the human mind should be
compounded, he can only 'insist upon some one or two as an example of
the rest.'

That was all that a writer, who was at the same time a public man,
could venture on,--a writer who had once been under violent political
suspicion, and was still eagerly watched, and especially by one class
of public functionaries, who seemed to feel, that with all his
deference to their claims, there was something there not quite
friendly to them, this was all that he could undertake to insist upon
'in that place.' But a writer who had the advantage of being already
defunct--a writer whose estate on the earth was then already done, and
who was in no kind of danger of losing either his head or his place,
could of course manage this part of the subject differently. _He_
would not find it too long to prosecute all, perhaps. And if he had at
the same time the advantage of a foreign name and seignorie, he could
come out in England at this very crisis with the freest exhibitions of
the points which are _here_ only _indicated_. He could even put them
down openly in his table of contents, every one of them, and make them
the titles of his chapters.

There was a work published in England, in that age, in which these
forces, of which only the _catalogue_ is inserted here, these forces
which _are_ in our power, which we _can_ alter, forces from which the
mind _suffereth_, which have operation upon the mind to affect the
will and appetite, are directly dealt with in the most subtle and
artistic manner, in the form of literary _essay_; and in the bolder
chapters, the author's observations and criticisms are clearly put
down; his scientific suggestions of alterations and new compounds, his
scientific doctrine of _careful alterations_, his scientific doctrine
of surgery, and adaptation of regimen, and cure to different ages, and
differing social conditions, are all promiscuously filed in, and the
English public swallows it without any difficulty at all, and
perceives nothing disagreeable or dangerous in it.

_This_ work contains, also, some of those other parts of the new
science which have just been reported as wanting, parts which are said
by the inventor of this science, to have a great ministry to policy,
as well as morality, and the natural history of the creature, which it
is here proposed to reform, is brought out without any regard whatever
to considerations which would inevitably affect a moralist, looking at
the subject from any less earnest and practical--from any less
_elevated_ point of view.

Of course, it was perfectly competent for a Gascon whose gasconading
was understood to be without any motive beyond that of vanity and
egotism, and without any incidence to effects, to say, in the way of
mere foolery, many things which an English statesman could not then so
well endorse. And in case his personality were called in question,
there was the mountain to retreat to, and the saint of the mount, in
whose behalf the goose is annually sacrificed by the English people,
the saint under whose shield and name the great English philosopher
sleeps. In fact, this personage is not so limited in his quarters as
the proper name might seem to imply. One does not have to go to the
south of France to find him. But it is certainly remarkable, that a
work in Natural History, composed by the inventors of the science of
observation, and the first in the field, containing their observations
in that part of the field too, in which the deficiency appeared to
them most important, should have been able to pass so long under so
thin a disguise, under this merest gauze of _egotism_, unchallenged.

These _essaies_, however, have not been without result. They have been
operating incessantly, ever since, directly upon the leading minds,
and indirectly upon the minds of men in general, (for many who had
never read the book, have all their lives felt its influence), and
tending gradually to the clearing up of the human intelligence in 'the
practice part of life' in general, and to the development of a common
sense on the topics here handled, much more creditable to the species
than anything that the author could find stirring in his age. When the
works which the propounders of the Great Instauration took pains to
get composed by way of filling up their plan of it, a little, corn to
be collected and bound, this one will have to find its place among
them.

But here, at home, in his own historical name and figure, in his own
person, instead of conducting his magnificent scientific experiments
on that scale which the genius of his activity, and the largeness of
his good will, would have prescribed to him, instead of founding his
House of Solomon as he would have founded it, (as that proximity to
the throne, when it was the throne of an absolute monarch might have
enabled him to found it, if the monarch he found there had been,
indeed, what he claimed to be, a lover of learning), instead of such
large help and countenance as that of the king, to whom this great
proposition was addressed, the philosopher of that time could not even
venture on a literary essay in this field under that protection; it
was as much as he could do, it was as much as his favor with the king
was worth, to slip in here, in this conspicuous place, where it would
be sure to be found, sooner or later, the index of his _essaies_.

'It would be too _long_,' he says, 'to inquire here into the operation
of all these social forces that are making men, that are doing more to
make them what they are, than nature herself is doing,' for, 'know
thou,' the Poet of this Philosophy says, 'know thou MEN ARE as the
TIME IS.' He has included here, in these points which he would have
scientifically handled, that which makes _times_, that which _can be
altered_, that which Advancements of Learning, however, set on foot at
first, are sure in the end to _alter_. 'We will insist upon some one
or two as an example of the rest.' And we find that the points he
resumes to speak of here, are, indeed, points of primary consequence;
social forces that do indeed need a scientific control, effects
reported, and precepts concluded. Custom and Habit, Books and Studies,
and then a kind of culture, which he says, 'seemeth to be more
accurate and elaborate than the rest,' which we find, upon
examination, to be a strictly religious culture, and lastly the method
to which he gives the preference, as the most compendious and summary
in its formative or reforming influence, 'the _electing_ and
propounding unto a man's self _good and virtuous ends of his life_,
such as may be in a _reasonable sort within his compass to attain_.'
He says enough under these heads to show the difficulty of writing on
a subject where the science has been reported wanting, while the 'Art
and Practice' is prescribed.

He lays much stress on CUSTOM and HABIT, and gives some few precepts
for its management, 'made out of the pith and heart of sciences,' but
he speaks briefly, and chiefly for the purpose of indicating the value
he attaches to this point, for he concludes his precepts and
observations on it, thus: 'Many other axioms there are, touching the
managing of exercise and custom, which being _so conducted_,--
scientifically conducted--do prove, _indeed_ ANOTHER NATURE' ['almost,
can _change_ the stamp of nature,'--is Hamlet's word on _this_
point]; 'but being governed by _chance_, doth commonly prove but AN
APE of nature, and bringeth forth that which is _lame and
counterfeit_.' For not less than that is the difference between the
scientific administration of these things, from which the mind
_suffereth_, and the blind, hap-hazard one.

But in proceeding to the next point on which he ventures to offer some
suggestions, that of BOOKS and STUDIES, we shall do well to take with
us that general doctrine of _cure_, founded upon the nature of things,
which he produces under the head of the cure of the body, with a
distinct allusion to its proper application here. And it is well to
observe how exactly the tone of the criticism in _this department_,
chimes in with that of the criticism already reported here. 'In the
consideration of the _cures of diseases_, I find a deficiency in the
receipts of _propriety_ respecting the _particular_ cures of diseases;
for the physicians _have frustrated the fruit of tradition, and
experience_, by their _magistralities_ in _adding and taking out_, and
changing _quid pro quo_ in their receipts _at their pleasure_,
COMMANDING SO OVER THE MEDICINE, as the medicine _cannot command over
the disease_:' that is a piece of criticism which appears to belong to
the general subject of cure; and here is one which he himself stops to
apply to a different branch of it.

'But, lest I grow more particular than _is agreeable_, either to my
intention or _proportion_, I will conclude this part with the note of
one deficiency more, which seemeth to me of GREATEST consequence,
which is, that the _prescripts_ in use are too COMPENDIOUS TO ATTAIN
THEIR END; for, to my understanding, it is a vain and flattering
opinion to think any _medicine_ can be so sovereign, or so happy, as
that the receipt or use of it can work any great effect upon the body
of man: it were a strange _speech_, which spoken, or spoken oft,
should reclaim a man from a vice to which he were _by nature subject_;
it is _order, pursuit, sequence, and interchange of application_ WHICH
IS MIGHTY IN NATURE,' (and it is _power_ we are inquiring for here)
'which, although it requires more exact _knowledge_ in prescribing,
and more precise _obedience_ in observing, yet it is recompensed with
the magnitude of effects.'

Possessed now of his general theory of cure, we shall better
understand his particular suggestions in regard to these medicines and
alteratives of the mind and manners, which are here under
consideration.

'So if we should handle BOOKS and STUDIES,' he continues, having
handled custom and habit a little and their powers, in that profoundly
suggestive manner, 'so if we should handle books and studies, and what
influence and operation _they_ have upon manners, are there not divers
precepts of _great caution_ and _direction_?' A question to be asked.
And he goes on to make some further enquiries and suggestions which
have considerably more in them than meets the ear. They appear to
involve the intimation that many of our books on moral philosophy,
come to us from the youthful and poetic ages of the world, ages in
which sentiment and spontaneous conviction supplied the place of
learning; for the accumulations of ages of experiment and conclusion,
tend to maturity and sobriety of judgment in the race, as do the
corresponding accumulations in the individual experience and memory.
'And the reason why books' (which are adapted to the popular belief in
these early and unlearned ages) 'are of so little effect towards
_honesty of life_, is that they are not read and
_revolved_--revolved--as they should be, by _men in mature years_.'
But unlearned people are always beginners. And it is dangerous to put
them upon the task, or to leave them to the task of remodelling their
beliefs and adapting them to the advancing stages of human
development. He, too, thinks it is easier to overthrow the old
opinions, than it is to discriminate that which is to be conserved in
them. The hints here are of the most profoundly cautious kind--as they
have need to be--but they point to the danger which attends the
advancement of learning when rashly and unwisely conducted, and the
danger of introducing opinions which are in advance of the popular
culture; dangers of which the history of former times furnished
eminent examples and warnings then; warnings which have since been
repeated in modern instances. He proposes that books shall be tried by
their effects on manners. If they fail to produce HONESTY OF LIFE, and
if certain particular forms of truth which were once effective to that
end, in the course of a popular advancement, or change of any kind,
have lost that virtue, let them be examined; let the translation of
them be scientifically accomplished, so that the main truth be not
lost in the process, so that men be not compelled by fearful
experience to retrace their steps in search of it, even, perhaps, to
the resuming of the old, dead form again, with all its cumbrous
inefficacies; for the lack of a leadership which should have been able
to discriminate for them, and forestall this empirical procedure.

Speaking of books of Moral science in general, and their adaptation to
different ages, he says--'Did not one of the _fathers_, in great
indignation, call POESY "_vinum demonum_," because it increaseth
_temptations_, _perturbations_, and _vain opinions_? Is not the
opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded, wherein he saith, "That
_young men_ are no fit _auditors_ of moral philosophy," because they
are not settled from the boiling heat of their _affections_, nor
attempered with _time_ and _experience_?' [And our Poet, we may remark
in passing, seems to have been struck with that same observation; for
by a happy coincidence, he appears to have it in his commonplace book
too, and he has not only made a note of it, as this one has, but has
taken the trouble to translate it into verse. He does, indeed, go a
little out of his way _in time_, to introduce it; but he is a poet who
is fond of an anachronism, when it happens to serve his purpose--

  'Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;
  And on the cause and question now in hand
  Have _glozed_; but, superficially, not much
  Unlike _young men_ whom _Aristotle_ thought
  Unfit to hear _moral philosophy_.']

The question is, then, as to the adaptations of forms, of moral
instruction to different _ages_ of the human development. For when a
decided want of 'honesty of life' shows itself, in any very general
manner, under the fullest operation of _any_ given doctrine which is
the received one, it is time for men of learning to begin to look
about them a little; and it is a time when directions so cautious as
these should not by any means be despised by those on whom the
responsibility of direction, here, is in any way devolved.

'And doth it not hereof come, that those excellent books and
discourses of the ancient writers, _whereby_ they have _persuaded unto
virtue most effectually_, by representing her in _state_ and
_majesty_, and popular opinions against virtue in their _parasites'
coats_, fit to be scorned and derided, are of so little effect towards
honesty of life--

  [_Polonius.--Honest_, my lord?
   _Hamlet_.--Ay, honest.]

'--because they are not read and _revolved_ by men, in their mature
and settled years, but confined almost _to boys and beginners_? But is
it not true, also, that _much less_ young men are fit auditors of
_matters of policy_ till they have been _thoroughly seasoned_ in
_religion and morality_, lest their judgments be corrupted, and made
apt to think that there are no true differences of things, but
according to utility and fortune.'

By putting in here two or three of those 'elegant sentences' which the
author has taken out from their connections in his discourses, and
strung together, by way of making more perceptible points and stronger
impressions with them, according to that theory of his in regard to
aphorisms already quoted, we shall better understand this passage, for
the connection in which it is introduced here tends somewhat to
involve and obscure the meaning. 'In removing superstitions,' he tells
us, then, in this so pointed manner, 'care should be had _the good_ be
not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done _when the people
is the physician_.' '_Things will have_ their _first_ or _second_
agitation.' [Prima Philosophia--pith and heart of sciences: the author
of this aphorism is sound and grounded.] 'If they be not tossed on the
waves of _counsel_, they will be _tossed on the waves of fortune_.'
That last 'tossing' requires a second cogitation. There might have
been a more direct way of expressing it; but this author prefers
similes in such cases, he tells us. But here is more on the same
subject. 'It were good that men in their RENOVATIONS follow the
example of time itself, which, indeed, innovateth greatly, but
quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived;' and 'Discretion in
speech is more than eloquence.' These are the sentiments and opinions
of that man of science, whose works we are now opening, not caring
under what particular name or form we may find them. One or two of
these observations do not sound at all like prescience _now_; but at
the time when they were given out as precepts of direction, it
required that acquaintance with the nature of things in general which
is derived from a large and studious observation of particulars, to
put them into a form so oracular.

But this general suggestion with regard to our books of moral
philosophy, and their adaptation to the largest effect on the will and
appetite under the given conditions of time--conditions which involve
the instruction of masses of men, in whom _affection_ predominates--
men in whom judgment is not yet matured--men not attempered with the
time and experience of ages, by means of those preservations of it
which the traditions of learning make; beside this general suggestion
in regard to these so potent instrumentalities in manners, he has
another to make, one in which this general proposition to substitute
learning for preconception in _practical matters_,--at least, as far
as may be, comes out again in the form of criticism, and of a most
specially significant kind. It is a point which he touches lightly
here; but one which he touches again and again in other parts of
this work, and one which he resumes at large in his practical ethics.

'Again, is there not a caution likewise to be given of the doctrines
of moralities themselves, some kinds of them, lest they make men too
_precise, arrogant, incompatible_, as Cicero saith of Cato, in _Marco
Catone_: "Haec bona quae videmus divina et egregia ipsius scitote esse
propria: quae nonnunquam requirimus, ea sunt omnia non a natura, sed a
magistro?"'

And after glancing at the specific subject of remedial agencies which
_are_ within the scope of our revision and renovation, under some
other heads, concluding with that which is of all others the most
compendious and summary, and again the most noble and effectual to the
reducing of the mind unto virtue and good estate, he concludes this
whole part, this part in which the points and outlines of the new
science--that radical human science which he has dared to report
deficient, come out with such masterly grasp and precision,--he
concludes this _whole part_ in the words which follow,--words which it
will take the author's own doctrine of interpretation to open. For
this is one of those passages which he commends to the second
cogitation of the reader, and he knew if 'the times that were nearer'
were not able to read it, 'the times that were farther off' would find
it clear enough.

'Therefore I do conclude this part of Moral _Knowledge_ concerning the
culture and regiment of the Mind; wherein if any man, _considering the
facts thereof which I have enumerated_, do judge that _my labour is_
to COLLECT INTO AN ART OR SCIENCE, that which hath been _pretermitted
by others_, as matters of common sense and experience, he judgeth
well.' The practised eye will detect on the surface here, some marks
of that style which this author recommends in such cases: especially
where such strong pre-occupations exist; already we perceive that this
is one of those sentences which is addressed to the skill of the
interpreter; in which, by means of a careful selection and collocation
of words, two or more meanings are conveyed under one form of
expression. And it may not be amiss to remember here, that this is a
style, according to the author's own description of it elsewhere, in
which the more involved and enigmatical passages sometimes admit of
_several_ readings, each having its own pertinence and value,
according to the mental condition of the reader; and that it is a
style in which even the _delicate, collateral sounds_, that are
distinctly included in this art of tradition, must come in sometimes
in the more critical places, in aid of the interpretation. 'But what
if it be an harangue whereon his life depends?'

l.--If any man considering the parts thereof, which I have enumerated,
do judge that MY LABOUR IS to _collect into an_ ART or SCIENCE that
which hath been PRETER-MITTED by others, _he_ judgeth well.

2.--If any man do judge that my labour is to collect into an ART or
SCIENCE that which hath been pretermitted by others AS MATTERS OF
COMMON SENSE and EXPERIENCE, _he_ judgeth well.

3.--If any man _considering_ the PARTS THEREOF WHICH I HAVE
ENUMERATED, do judge that my labor is to collect into an ART or
SCIENCE, that which hath been pretermitted _by_ OTHERS, as matters of
common sense and experience, _he_ judgeth well.

But if there be any doubt, about the more critical of these meanings,
let us read on, and we shall find the criticism of this great and
greatest proposition, the proposition to substitute learning for
preconception, in the main department of human practice, brought out
with all the emphasis and significance which becomes the close of so
great a period in sciences, and not without a little flowering of that
rhetoric, in which beauty is the incident, and discretion is more than
eloquence.

'But as Philocrates sported with Demosthenes you may not marvel,
Athenians, that _Demosthenes_ and I do differ, for _he_ drinketh
water, and _I_ drink wine. And like as we read of an ancient parable
of the two gates of sleep--

  Sunt geminae somni portae, quarum altera fertur
  Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris:
  Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
  Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia manes.

'So if we put on _sobriety and attention_ we shall find it a sure
maxim in knowledge, _that the more pleasant liquor of wine is the more
vaporous_, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser
dreams.'

CHAPTER VI.

METHOD OF CONVEYING THE WISDOM OF THE MODERNS

  It is a basilisk unto mine eyes,--
  _Kills me to look_ on't,

  This fierce abridgment
  Hath to it circumstantial branches, which
  Distinction should be rich in.

  _Cymbeline_.

This whole subject is introduced here in its natural and inevitable
connection with that special form of Delivery and Tradition which it
required. For we find that connection indicated here, where the matter
of the tradition, and that part of it which specially requires this
form is treated, and we find the form itself specified here
incidentally, but not less unmistakeably, that it is in that part of
the work where the Art of Tradition is the primary subject. In
bestowing on 'the parts' of this science, which the propounder of it
is here enumerating--that consideration which the concluding paragraph
invites to them, we find, not only the fields clearly marked out, in
which he is labouring to collect into an art and science, that which
has hitherto been conducted without art or science, and left to common
sense and experience, the fields in which these goodly observations
grow, of which men have hitherto been content to gather a poesy to
carry in their hands,--(observations which he will bring home to his
confectionery, in such new and amazing prodigality and selection), but
we find also _the very form_ which these new collections, with the new
precepts concluded on them, would naturally take, and that it is one
in which these new parts of the new science and its art, which he is
labouring to constitute, might very well come out, at such a time,
without being recognised as philosophy at all,--might even be brought
out by _other_ men without science, as matters of common sense and
experience; though the world would have to concede, and the longer the
study went on, the more it would be inclined to concede, that the
common sense and experience was upon the whole somewhat uncommon, and
some who perceived its reaches, without finding that it was _art or
science_, would even be inclined to call it preternatural.

And when he tells us, that the first step in the New Science is _the
dissection_ of _character_, and the production and exhibition of
certain scientifically constructed portraits, by means of which this
may be effected, portraits which shall represent in their type-form by
means of 'illustrious instances,' the several characters and tempers
of men's _natures_ and _dispositions_ 'that the _secret disposition of
each particular man_ may be laid open, and from a knowledge of the
whole, the precepts concerning the cures of the mind may be more
rightly concluded,'--surely _here_, to a man of learning, _the
form_,--the form in which these artistically composed diagrams will be
found, is not doubtfully indicated.

And when, at the next step, we come to the history of 'the
affections,' and are told distinctly that _here_ philosophy, the
philosophy of practice, must needs descend from the abstraction, and
generalities of the ancient morality, for those observations and
experiments which it is the legitimate business of the poet to
conduct, though the poet, in conducting these observations and
experiments, has hitherto been wanting in the rigor which science
requires, when we are told that philosophy must _inevitably_ enter
here, that department of learning, of which the true poet is 'the
doctor,'--surely here at least, we know where we are. Certainly it is
not the fault of the author of the Great Instauration if we do _not_
know what department of learning the collections of the new learning
which he claims to have made will be found in--if found at all, _must_
be found in. It is not his fault if we do not know in what department
to look for the applications of the Novum Organum to those 'noblest
subjects' on which he preferred to try its powers, he tells us. Here
at least--the Index to these missing books--is clear enough.

But in his treatment of Poetry, as one of the three grand departments
of Human Learning, for not less noble than that is the place he openly
assigns to it, though that open and primary treatment of it, is
superficially brief, he contrives to insert in it, his deliberate,
scientific preference of it, as a means of effective scientific
exhibition, to either of the two graver parts, which he has associated
with it--to history on the one hand, as corresponding to the faculty
of memory, and to philosophy or mere abstract statement on the other,
as corresponding to the faculty of Reason; for it is that great
radical department of learning, which is referred to the Imagination,
that constitutes in this distribution of learning the third grand
division of it. He shows us here, in a few words, under different
points and heads, what masterly facilities, what indispensable,
incomparable powers it has for that purpose. There is a form of it,
'which is as A VISIBLE HISTORY, and is an image of actions as if _they
were present_, as history is, of actions that _are past_.' There is a
form of it which is applied only to express some _special purpose_ or
_conceit_, which was used of old by _philosophers_ to express any
point of _reason_ more sharp and subtle than the vulgar, and,
nevertheless, _now and at all times_ these _allusive parabolical_
poems do retain much life and vigour because--note it,--note that
because,--that _two-fold because_, because REASON CANNOT be so
SENSIBLE, nor EXAMPLES SO FIT. And he adds, also, 'there remains
another use of this poesy, opposite to the one just mentioned, for
that use tendeth to _demonstrate_ and _illustrate_ that which is
taught or delivered; and this other to _retire_ and _obscure_ it: that
is, when the secrets and mysteries of _religion, policy or philosophy_
are involved in fables and parables.'

But under the cover of introducing the 'Wisdom of the Ancients,' and
the form in which that was conveyed, he explains more at large the
conditions which this kind of exhibition best meets; he claims it as a
proper form of _learning_, and tells us outright, that the New Science
_must be_ conveyed in it. He has left us here, all prepared to our
hands, precisely the argument which the subject now under
consideration requires.

'Upon deliberate consideration, my judgment is, that a _concealed
instruction_ and _allegory_, was originally intended in many of the
ancient fables; observing that some fables discover a great and
evident similitude, relation, and connection with the things they
signify, as well in the _structure of the fable_, as in the _propriety
of the names_ whereby _the persons or actors are characterised_,
insomuch that no one could positively deny a sense and meaning to be
from the first intended and purposely shadowed out in them'; and he
mentions some instances of this kind; and the first is a very
explanatory one, tending to throw light upon the proceedings of men
whose rebellions, so far as political action is concerned, have been
successfully repressed. And he takes occasion to introduce this
particular fable repeatedly in similar connections. 'For who can hear
that _Fame_, after the giants were destroyed, sprung up as their
_posthumous sister_, and not apply it to the clamour of _parties_, and
the seditious rumours which commonly fly about upon the _quelling of
insurrections_. _Or_ who, upon hearing that memorable expedition of
the gods against the giants, when the braying of _Silenus' ass_
greatly contributed in putting the giants to flight, does not clearly
conceive that this directly _points_ to the _monstrous_ enterprises of
_rebellious subjects_, which are frequently disappointed and
frustrated by _vain fears and empty rumours_. Nor is it wonder if
sometimes a _piece of history_ or other things are introduced by way
of ornament, or if _the times_ of the action are confounded,' [the
very likeliest thing in the world to happen; things are often 'forced
in _time_' as he has given us to understand in complimenting a king's
book where the person was absent but not the occasion], 'or if part of
one fable be tacked to another, for all this must necessarily happen,
as the fables were the invention of men who lived in _different ages_,
and had _different views_, some of them being _ancient_, others more
_modern_, some having an eye to _natural philosophy_, _others_ to
_morality_ and _civil policy_.'

This appears to be just the kind of criticism we happen to be in need
of in conducting our present inquiry, and the passage which follows is
not less to the purpose.

For, having given some other reasons for this opinion he has expressed
in regard to the concealed doctrine of the ancients, he concludes in
this manner: 'But if any one shall, notwithstanding this, contend that
allegories are always adventitious, and no way native or _genuinely_
contained in them, we _might here leave him undisturbed in the gravity
of that judgment_, though we cannot but think it somewhat dull and
phlegmatic, and, _if it were worth the trouble_, proceed to another
_kind_ of argument.' And, apparently, the argument he proceeds to, is
worth some trouble, since he takes pains to bring it out so
cautiously, under so many different heads, with such iteration and
fulness, taking care to insert it so many times in his work on the
Advancement of Learning, and here producing it again in his
Introduction to the Wisdom of the Ancients, accompanied with a
distinct assurance that it is _not_ the wisdom of the _ancients_ he is
concerning himself about, and _their_ necessities and helps and
instruments; though if any one persists in thinking that it _is_, he
is not disposed to disturb him in the gravity of that judgment. He
honestly thinks that they had indeed such intentions as those that he
describes; but that is a question for the curious, and he has other
work on hand; he happens to be one, whose views of learning and its
uses, do not keep him long on questions of mere curiosity. It is with
the Moderns, and not with the Ancients that he has to deal; it is the
present and the future, and not the past that he 'breaks his sleeps'
for. Whether the Ancients used those fables for purposes of
innovation, and gradual encroachment on error or not, here is a
Modern, he tells us, who for one, cannot dispense with them in _his_
teaching.

For having disposed of his _graver_ readers--those of the dull and
phlegmatic kind--in the preceding paragraph, and not thinking it worth
exactly that kind of trouble it would have cost then to make himself
more explicit for the sake of reaching _their_ apprehension, he
proceeds to the following argument, which is not wanting in clearness
for 'those who happen to be of his ear.'

'Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the
use of Parables, for parables serve as well to instruct and
illustrate, as to wrap up and envelope:' [and what is more, they serve
at once that double purpose] 'so that for _the present we drop the
concealed use_, and suppose the _ancient fables_ to be vague
undeterminate things _formed for amusement, still the other use must
remain_, and can never be given up. And every man of any learning must
readily allow that THIS METHOD of INSTRUCTION is grave, sober,
exceedingly useful, and _sometimes necessary in the sciences_, as it
opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding, IN ALL
NEW DISCOVERIES that are abstruse and _out of the road of vulgar
opinion_. Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and
conclusions of the human reason as are _now_ trite and common, were
rare and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables,
similes, comparisons, allusions, which were not intended to _conceal_,
but to _inform and teach_, whilst the minds of men continued rude and
unpractised in matters of subtlety and speculation, and even
impatient, and in a manner _incapable of receiving such things as did
not directly fall under and strike the senses_.' [And those ages were
not gone by, it seems, for these are the very men of whom Hamlet
speaks, 'who for the most part are capable of nothing but
_inexplicable dumb-shows_ and _noise_.'] 'For as hieroglyphics were in
use before writings, so were parables in use _before argument_. _And
even to this day_, if any man would let NEW LIGHT IN upon the human
understanding, [who was it that proposed to do that?] and _conquer
prejudices without raising animosities_, OPPOSITION, or
DISTURBANCE--[who was it that proposed to do that precisely]--he _must
still_--[note it]--he _must still go in the same path_, and have
recourse _to the like method_.' Where are they then? Search and see.
Where are they?--The lost Fables of the New Philosophy? 'To conclude,
the knowledge of the earlier ages was either great or happy; _great_,
if _by design_ they made use of tropes and figures; happy, if whilst
_they had other views_ they afforded _matter_ and _occasion_ to such
_noble contemplations_. Let either be the case, _our_ pains perhaps
will not be misemployed, _whether we illustrate_ ANTIQUITY _or_ [hear]
THINGS THEMSELVES.

But he complains of those who have attempted such interpretations
hitherto, that 'being _unskilled in nature_, and _their learning_ no
more than that of common-place, they have applied the sense of the
parables to certain _general_ and _vulgar_ matters, without reaching
to their real purport, genuine interpretation and full depth;'
certainly it would not be _that kind_ of criticism, then, which would
be able to bring out _the_ subtleties of the _new learning_ from those
popular embodiments, which he tells us it will have to take, in order
to make some impression, at least, on the common understanding.
'Settle that question, then, in regard to the old Fables as you will,
_our_ pains will not perhaps be misemployed, whether we illustrate
antiquity or things themselves,' and to that he adds, 'for _myself,
therefore, I expect to appear_ NEW in THESE COMMON THINGS, because,
leaving untouched such as are sufficiently plain and open, I _shall
drive only those_ that are either deep or rich.' 'For myself?'--I?--'I
expect to appear new in these common things.' But elsewhere, where he
lays out the argument of them, by the side of that 'resplendent and
lustrous mass of matter,' those _heroical_ descriptions of virtue,
duty, and felicity, that _others_ have got glory from, it is some
_Poet_ we are given to understand that is going to be found _new_ in
them. _There_, the argument is all--_all_--_poetic_, and it is a theme
for one who, if he know how to handle it, need not be afraid to put in
his modest claim, with those who sung of old, the wrath of heroes, and
their arms.

Any one who does not perceive that the passages here quoted were
designed to introduce more than 'the wisdom of the ancients', the
reader who is disposed to conclude after a careful perusal of these
reiterated statements, in regard to the form in which doctrines
differing from received opinions must be delivered, taken in
connexion, too, with that draught of the new science of the _human
culture_ and its parts and points, which has just been produced
here,--the reader who concludes that _this_ is, after all, a science
that _was_ able to dispense with this method of appeal to the senses
and the imagination; that it was _not_ obliged to have recourse to
that path;--that the NEW LEARNING, 'the NEW DISCOVERY,' had here no
fables, no particular topics, and methods of tradition; that it
contented itself with abstractions and generalities, with 'the husks
and shells of sciences,'--such an one ought, undoubtedly, to be left
undisturbed in that opinion. He belongs precisely to that class of
persons which this author himself deliberately proposed to leave to
such conclusions. He is one whom this philosopher himself would not
take any trouble at all to enlighten on such points. The other
reading, with all its _gravity_, was designed for him. The time for
such an one to adopt the reading here produced, will be, when 'those
who are incapable of receiving such things as do not directly fall
under and strike the senses,' have, at last, got hold of it; when 'the
groundlings, who, for the most part are capable of nothing but dumb
show and noise,' have had their ears split with it, it will be time
enough for him.

This Wisdom of the Moderns, then, to resume with those to whom the
appeal is made, this new learning which the Wise Man and Innovator of
the Modern Ages tells us must be clothed in fable, and adorned with
verse, this learning that must be made to fall under and strike the
senses; this dumb show of science, that is but show to him who cannot
yet take the player's own version of what it means; this illustrated
tradition, this beautiful tradition of the New Science of Human
Nature,--where is it? This historical collection, this gallery that
was to contain scientific draughts and portraitures of the human
character, that should exhaust its varieties,--where is it? These new
Georgics of the mind whose _argument is here_,--where are they? This
new Virgil who might promise himself such glory,--such new glory in
the singing of them,--where is he? Did he make so deep a summer in his
verse, that the track of the precept was lost in it? Were the flowers,
and the fruit, so thick, there; was the reed so sweet that the
argument of that great husbandry could no point,--could leave no
furrow in it?

  'Where souls do couch, on flowers, we'll hand in hand,
  And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze:
  Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,
  And all the haunt be ours.'

'The neglect of our times,' says this author, in proposing this great
argument, this new argument, of the application of SCIENCE to the
Culture and Cure of the Mind, 'the neglect of _our times_, wherein
_few men do hold any consultations_ touching the _reformation of their
lives, may_ make _this part_ seem superfluous. As Seneca excellently
saith, "De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo."' And is
that, after all,--is that the trouble still? Is it, that that
characteristic of Elizabeth's time--that same thing which Seneca
complained of in Nero's,--is it that _that_ is not yet obsolete? Is
that the reason, this so magnificent part, this radical part of the
new discovery of the Modern Ages, is still held 'superfluous?' 'De
partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo.' 'Now that we have
spoken, and spoken for so many ages, of this fruit of life, it
remaineth to speak of the husbandry thereunto.' That is the scientific
proposition which has waited now two hundred and fifty years, for a
scientific audience. The health of the soul, the scientific promotion
of it, the FRUIT OF LIFE, and the observations of its husbandry. 'And
if it be said,' he continues, anticipating the first inconsiderate
objection, 'if it be said that the cure of mens' minds belongeth to
sacred divinity, it is most true; but yet, moral philosophy may be
preferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For as the
Psalm saith, that the eyes of the handmaid look perpetually towards
the _mistress_, and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the
_discretion_ of the handmaid, to _discern of the mistress' will_; so
ought moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines
of divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits,
many sound and profitable directions.'

For the times that were 'far off' when that proposition was made, it
is brought out anew and reopened. Oh, people of the ages of arts and
sciences that are called by this man's name, shall we have the fruits
of his new doctrine of KNOWLEDGE, brought to our relief in all other
fields, and reject it in this, which he himself laid out, and claimed
as its only worthy field? Instructed now in the validity of its
claims, by its 'magnitude of effects' in every department of the human
practice to which it has yet been applied, shall we permit the
department of it, on which _his_ labour was expended, to escape that
application? Shall we suffer that wild barbaric tract of the human
life which the will and affections of man create,--that tract which he
seized,--which it was his labour to collect into an art or science, to
lie unreclaimed still?

Oh, Man of the new ages of science, will you have the new
fore-knowledge, the magical command of effects, which the scientific
inquiry into causes as they are actual in nature, puts into our hands,
in every other practice, in every other culture and cure,--will you
have the rule of this knowledge imposed upon your fields, and
orchards, and gardens, to assist weak nature in her 'conservations'
and 'advancements' in these,--to teach her to bring forth here the
latent ideals, towards which she struggles and vainly yearns, and can
only point to, and wait for, till science accepts her hints;--will you
have the Georgics of this new Virgil to load your table with its magic
clusters;--will you take the Novum Organum to pile your plate with its
ideal advancements on spontaneous nature and her perfections;--will
you have the rule of that Organum applied in its exactest rigors, to
all the physical oppositions of your life, to minister to your
physical safety, and comfort, and luxury, and never relax your
exactions from it, till the last conceivable degree of these has been
secured; and in this department of art and science,--this, in which
the sum of our good and evil is contained,--in a mere oversight of it,
in a disgraceful indifference and carelessness about it, be content to
accept, without criticism, the machinery of the
past--instrumentalities that the unlearned ages of the world have left
to us,--arts whose precepts were concluded ages ere we knew that
_knowledge_ is power.

Shall we be content to accept as a science any longer, a science that
leaves human life and its actualities and particulars, unsearched,
uncollected, unreduced to scientific nomenclature and axiom? Shall we
be content any longer with a knowledge that is _power_,--shall we
boast ourselves any longer of a scientific _art_ that leaves _human_
nature,--that makes over human nature to the tampering of an
unwatched, unchecked empiricism, that leaves our own souls it may be,
and the souls in which ours are garnered up, all wild and hidden, and
gnarled within with nature's crudities and spontaneities, or choked
and bitter with artificial, but unscientific, unartistic repression?

Will you have of that divinely appointed and beautiful 'handmaid,'
that was brought in on to this Globe Theatre, with that upward
look,--with eyes turned to that celestial sovereignty for her
direction, with the sum of good in her intention, with the universal
doctrine of practice in her programme, with the relief 'of man's
estate and the Creator's glory' put down in her role,--with her _new
song_--with her song of man's nature and life _as it is,_ on her
lips--will you have of her, only the minister to your physical
luxuries and baser wants? Be it so: but in the name of that truth
which is able to survive ages of misunderstanding and detraction, in
the name of that honor which is armed with arts of self-delivery and
tradition, that will enable it to live again, 'though all the earth
o'erwhelm it to men's eyes,' while this Book of the Advancemement of
Learning stands, do not charge on this man henceforth, that election.

The times of that ignorance in which it could be thus accredited, are
past; for the leader of this Advancement is already unfolding his
tradition, and opening his books; and he bids us debase his name no
longer, into a name for these sordid fatuities. The Leader of ages
that are yet to be,--ages whose nobler advancements, whose rational
and scientific advancements to the dignity and perfection of the human
form, it was given to him and to his company to plan and initiate,--he
declines to be held any longer responsible for the blind, demoniacal,
irrational spirit, that would seize on his great instrument of
science, and wrest it from its nobler object and intent, and debase it
into the _mere_ tool of the senses; the tool of a materialism more
base and sordid than any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a
thousand-fold, than the materialism of ages, when there was yet a god
in the wood and the stone, when there was yet a god in the brick and
the mortar. This '_broken science_' that has no end of ends, this
godless science, this railway learning that travels with restless,
ever quickening speed, no whither,--these dead, rattling 'branches'
and slivers of arts and sciences, these _modern_ arts and sciences,
hacked and cut away from that tree of sciences, from which they
sprang, whereon they grew, are _his_ no longer. He declines to be held
any longer responsible for a materialism that shelters itself under
the name of philosophy, and identifies his own name with it. Call it
science, if you will, though science be the name for unity and
comprehension, and the spirit of life, the spirit of the largest
whole; call it philosophy if you will, if you think philosophy is
capable of being severed from that common trunk, in which this
philosopher found its pith and heart,--call it science,--call it
philosophy,--but call it not, he says,--call it not henceforth
'_Baconian_.'

For _his_ labor is to collect into an art or science the doctrine of
_human_ life. He, too, has propounded that problem,--he has translated
into the modern speech, that problem, which the inspired Leader of
men, of old propounded. 'What is a man profited if he should gain the
whole world and lose his own soul; or what can a man give in exchange
for his soul?' He, too, has recognized that ideal type of human
excellence, which the Great Teacher of old revealed and exemplified;
he has found scientifically,--he has found in the universal law,--that
divine dogma, which was taught of old by One who spake as having
authority--One who also had looked on nature with a loving and
observant eye, and found in its source, the Inspirer of his doctrine.
In his study of that old book of divinity which he calls the book of
God's Power this Modern Innovator has found the scientific version of
that inspired command 'Be ye therefore perfect.' This new science of
morality, which is '_moral knowledge_,' is able to recognise the
inspiration and divinity of that received platform and exemplar of
good, and pours in on it the light of a universal illustration. And in
his new scientific policy, in his scientific doctrine of success, in
his doctrine of the particular and private good, when he brings out at
last the rule which shall secure it from all the blows of fortune,
what is it but that same old '_Primum quærite_' which he
produces,--clothing it with the authority and severe exaction of a
scientific rule in art,--that same '_Primum quærite_' which was
published of old as a doctrine of faith only. 'But let men rather
build,' he says, 'upon that foundation, which is as a corner-stone of
divinity and _philosophy, wherein they join close; namely_, that _same
'Primum quærite_.' For divinity saith, 'Seek first the kingdom of God,
and all other things shall be added to you'; and philosophy saith,
'Primum quærite bona animi cætera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt.'

And who will now undertake to say that it is, indeed, written in the
Book of God,--in the Book of the Providential Design, and Creative
Law, or that it is written in the Revelation of a divine good will to
men; that those who cultivate and cure the soul--who have a divine
appointment to the office of its cure--shall thereby be qualified to
ignore its actual laws, or that they shall find in the scientific
investigation of its actual history, or in this new--so new, this so
wondrous and beautiful science, which is here laid out in all its
parts and points on the basis of a universal science of practice,--no
'ministry' to their end? Who shall say that the Regimen of the mind,
that its Education and healthful culture, as well as its cure, shall
be able to accept of no instrumentalities from the _advancement_ of
learning? Who shall say that this department of the human life--_this_
alone, is going to be held back to the past, with bonds and cramps of
iron, while all else is advancing; that this is going to be held
forever as a place where the old Aristotelian logic, which we have
driven out of every other field, can keep its hold unchallenged
still,--as a place for the metaphysics of the school-men, the empty
conceits, the old exploded inanities of the Dark Ages, to breed and
nestle in undisturbed?

Who shall claim that this department is the only one, which that gift,
that is the last gift of Creation and Providence to man is forbidden
to enter?

Surely it is the authorised doctrine of a supernatural aid, that it is
never brought in to sanction indolence and the neglect of means and
instruments already in our power; and in that book of these new ages
in which the doctrine of a successful human practice was promulgated,
is it not written that in no department of the human want, 'can those
noble effects, which God hath set forth to be bought as the price of
labour, be obtained as the price of a few easy and slothful
observances?'

And who that looks on the world as it is at this hour, with all our
boasted aids and instrumentalities,--who that hears that cry of sorrow
which goes up from it day and night,--who that looks at these masses
of men as they are,--who that dares to look at all this vice and
ignorance and suffering which no instrumentality, mighty to relieve,
has yet reached, shall think to put back,--as if we had no need of
it,--this great gift of light and healing,--this gift of _power_,
which the scientific ages are bringing in; this gift which the ages of
'anticipation,' the ages of inspiration and spontaneous affirmation,
could only divinely--diviningly--foresee and promise;--this gift which
the knowledge of the creative laws, the historic laws, the laws of
kind, as they are actual in the human nature and the human life, puts
into our hands? Who shall think himself competent to oppose this
benefaction? Alas for such an one! let us take up a lamentation for
him. He has stayed too long. The constitution of things, the universal
laws of being, and the Providence of this world are against him. The
track of the advancing ages goes over him. He is at variance with that
which was and shall be. The world's wheel goes over him. And whosoever
falls on that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it falls it
shall grind him to powder.

It is by means of the scientific Art of Delivery and Tradition, that
this doctrine of the scientific Culture and Cure of the Mind, which is
the doctrine of the scientific ages, has been made over to us in the
abstract; and it is by means of the rule of interpretation, which this
Art of Delivery prescribes, it is by means of the secret of an
Illustrated Tradition, or Poetic Tradition of this science, that we
are now enabled to unlock at last those magnificent collections in
it--those inexhaustible treasures and mines of it--which the
Discoverer, in spite of the time, has contrived to leave us, in that
form of Fable and Parable in which the advancing truth has always been
left,--in that form of Poesy in which the highest truth has, from of
old, been uttered. For over all this ground lay extended, then, in
watchful strength all safe and unespied, the basilisk of whom the
Fable goes, if he sees you first, you die for it,--_but_ if YOU SEE
HIM FIRST, HE DIES. And this is the Bishop who fought with a _mace_,
because he would _kill_ his enemy and not _wound_ him.

BOOK II.

ELIZABETHAN 'SECRETS OF MORALITY AND POLICY';

OR,

THE FABLES OF THE NEW LEARNING.

Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit.
_Advancement of Learning._

INTRODUCTORY.

CHAPTER I.

THE DESIGN.

The object of this Volume is merely to open _as a study_, and a study
of primary consequence, those great Works of the Modern Learning which
have passed among us hitherto, for lack of the historical and
scientific key to them, as Works of Amusement, merely.

But even in that superficial acquaintance which we have had with them
in that relation, they have, all the time, been subtly operating upon
the minds in contact with them, and perpetually fulfilling the first
intention of their Inventor.

'For,' says the great Innovator of the Modern Ages,--the author of the
_Novum_ Organum, and of the _Advancement_ of Learning,--in claiming
this department of Letters as the necessary and proper instrumentality
of a new science,--of a science at least, 'foreign to opinions
received,'--as he claims elsewhere that it is, under all conditions,
the inevitable essential form of this science in particular. 'Men have
proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the use of
parables, for they serve as well to _instruct_ and _illustrate_ as to
_wrap up and envelope_, so that, though for the present, we drop the
concealed use, and suppose them to be _vague undeterminate things_,
formed for AMUSEMENT merely, still the other _use_ remains. 'And every
man of _any_ learning must readily concede,' he says, 'the value of
that use of them as a method of popular instruction, grave, sober,
exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the _sciences_, as it
opens an easy and _familiar_ passage to the human understandings in
_all new_ discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar
opinion. They were used of old by _philosophers_ to express any point
of reason more sharp and subtle than the vulgar, and nevertheless
_now_, and _at all times_, these allusive parabolical forms retain
much life and vigor, because _reason_ cannot be _so sensible_ nor
_examples so fit_.' That philosophic use of them was to inform and
teach, whilst the minds of men continued rude and unpractised in
matters of subtilty and speculation, and even impatient and in a
manner incapable of receiving anything that did not directly fall
under and strike the senses. 'And, even to this day, if any man would
let new light in upon the human understanding, and conquer prejudices
without raising animosities, opposition, or _disturbance_, he must
still go in _the same path_ and have recourse to the like method.'

That is the use which the History and Fables of the New Philosophy
have already _had_ with us. We have been feeding without knowing it,
on the 'principal and supreme sciences'--the 'Prima Philosophia' and
its noblest branches. We have been taking the application of the
Inductive Philosophy to the principal concerns of our human life, and
to the phenomena of of the human nature itself, as mere sport and
pastime; though the precepts concluded, the practical axioms inclosed
with it have already forced their way into our learning, for all our
learning is, even now, inlaid and glittering with those 'dispersed
directions.'

We have profited by this use of them. It has not been pastime merely
with us. We have not spent our time in vain on this first stage of an
Advancing Learning, a learning that will not cease to advance until it
has invaded all our empiricisms, and conquered all our practice; a
learning that will recompence the diligence, the exactitude, the
severity of observance which it will require here also (when it comes
to put in its claim here, as Learning and not Amusement merely), with
that same magnitude of effects that, in other departments, has already
justified the name which its Inventor gave it--a Learning which will
give us here, also, in return for the severity of observance it will
require, what no ceremonial, however exacting can give us, that
control of effects, with which, even in its humblest departments, it
has already fulfilled, in the eyes of all the world, the prophecy
which its Inventors uttered when they called it the NEW MAGIC.

That first use of the Histories and Fables of the Modern Learning, we
have had already; and it is not yet exhausted. But in that rapid
development of a common intelligence, to which the new science of
practice has itself so largely contributed, even in its lower and
limited developments, we come now to that other and so important use
of these Fables, which the philosophic Innovator proposed to drop for
the time, in his argument--that use of them, in which they serve 'to
wrap up and conceal' for the time, or to limit to the few, who are
able to receive them, those new discoveries which are as yet too far
in advance of the common beliefs and opinions of men, and too far
above the mental habits and capacities of the masses of men, to be
safely or profitably communicated to the many in the abstract.

But in order to arrive at this second and nobler use of them, it will
be necessary to bestow on them a very different kind of study from any
that we have naturally thought it worth while to spend on them, so
long as we regarded them as works of pastime merely; and especially
while that insuperable obstacle to any adequate examination of them,
which the received history of the works themselves created, was still
operating on the criticism. The truths which these Parabolic and
Allusive Poems wrap up and conceal, have been safely concealed
hitherto, because they are not those common-place truths which we
usually look for as the point and moral of a tale which is supposed to
have a moral or politic intention,--truths which we are understood to
be in possession of beforehand, while the parable or instance is only
designed to impress the sensibility with them anew, and to reach the
will that would not take them from the reason, by means of the senses
or the imagination. It is not that spontaneous, intuitive knowledge,
or those conventional opinions, those unanalysed popular beliefs,
which we usually expect to find without any trouble at all, on the
very surface of any work that has morality for its object, it is not
any such coarse, lazy performance as that, that we need trouble
ourselves to look for here. This higher intention in these works
'their real import, genuine interpretation, and full depth,' has not
yet been found, _because_ the science which is wrapped in them, though
it is the principal science in the plan of the Advancement of
Learning, has hitherto escaped our notice, and _because_ of the
exceeding subtlety of it,--because the truths thus conveyed or
concealed are new, and recondite, and out of the way of any casual
observation,--because in this scientific collection of the phenomena
of the human life, designed to serve as the basis of new social arts
and rules of practice, the author has had occasion to go behind the
vague, popular, unscientific terms which serve well enough for
purposes of discourse, and mere oratory, to those principles which are
actual and historical, those simple radical forms and differences on
which the doctrine of power and practice must be based.

It is pastime no longer. It is a study, the most patient, the most
profoundly earnest to which these works now invite us. Let those who
will, stay in the playground still, and make such sport and pastime of
it there, as they may; and let those who feel the need of inductive
rules here also,--here on the ground which this pastime covers--let
those who perceive that we have as yet, set our feet only on the
threshold of the Great Instauration, find here with diligent research,
the ascent to the axioms of practice,--that ascent which the author of
the science of practice in general, made it _his labour_ to hew out
_here_, for _he_ undertook 'to collect here into an art or science,
that which had been pretermitted by others as matters of common sense
and experience.'

It does not consist with the design of the present work to track that
draught of a new science of morality and policy, that 'table' of an
inductive science of human nature, and human life, which the plan of
the Advancement of Learning contains, with all the lettering of its
compartments put down, into these systematic scientific collections,
which the Fables of the Modern Learning,--which these magnificent
Parabolical Poems have been able hitherto to wrap up and conceal.

This work is merely introductory, and the design of it is to remove
that primary obstacle to the diligent study of these works, which the
present theory of them contains; since that concealment of their true
intention and history, which was inevitable at the time, no longer
serves the author's purpose, and now that the times are ripe for the
learning which they contain, only serves indeed to hinder it. And the
illustrations which are here produced, are produced with reference to
that object, and are limited strictly to the unfolding of those
'_secrets of policy_,' which are the necessary introduction to that
which follows.

CHAPTER II.

THE MISSING BOOKS OF THE GREAT INSTAURATION;
OR, PHILOSOPHY ITSELF.

Did it never occur to the student of the _Novum Organum_ that the
constant application of that '_New Machine_' by the inventor of it
himself, to one particular class of subjects, so constant as to
produce on the mind of the careless reader the common impression, that
it was intended to be applied to that class only, and that the relief
of the human estate, in that one department of the human want,
constituted its whole design: did it never occur to the curious
inquirer, or to the active experimenter in this new rule of learning,
that this apparently so rigorous limitation of its applications in the
hands of its author is--under all the circumstances--a thing worthy of
being inquired into? Considering who the author of it is, and that it
is on the face of it, a new method of dealing with facts in general, a
new method of obtaining axioms of practice from history in general,
and not a specific method of obtaining them from that particular
department of history from which his instances are taken; and,
considering, too, that the author was himself aware of the whole sweep
of its applications, and that he has taken pains to include in his
description of its powers, the assertion,--the distinct, deliberate
assertion--that it is capable of being applied as _efficiently_, to
those nobler departments of the human need, which are marked out for
it in the Great Instauration--those very departments in which he was
known himself to be so deeply interested, and in which he had been all
his life such a diligent explorer and experimenter. Did it never occur
to the scholar, to inquire why he did not apply it, then, himself to
those very subjects, instead of keeping so stedfastly to the physical
forces in his illustration of its powers? And has any one ever read
the plan of this man's works? Has any one seen the scheme of that
great enterprise, for which he was the responsible person in his own
time--that scheme which he wrote out, and put in among these published
acknowledged works of his, which he dared to produce in his own name,
to show what parts of his '_labor_,'--what part of chief consequence
was _not_ thus produced? Has any one seen that plan of a new system of
Universal Science, which was published in the reign of James the
First, under the patronage of that monarch? And if it has been seen,
what is the reason there has been no enquiry made for those works, in
which the author openly proposes to apply his new organum in person to
these very subjects; and that, too, when he takes pains to tell us, in
reference to that undertaking, that he is _not_ a vain promiser.

There is a pretence of supplying that new kind of history, which the
new method of discovery and invention requires as the first step
towards its conclusions, which is put down as the THIRD PART of the
Instauration, though the natural history which is produced for that
purpose is very far from fulfilling the description and promise of
that division. But where is the FOURTH part of the Great Instauration?
Has anybody seen the FOURTH part? Where is that so important part for
which all that precedes it is a preparation, or to which it is
subsidiary? Where is that part which consists of EXAMPLES, that are
nothing but a _particular_ application of the SECOND; that is, the
Novum Organum,--'and to _subjects of the noblest kind_?' Where is
'that part of our work which enters upon PHILOSOPHY ITSELF,' instead
of dealing any longer, or professing to deal, with THE METHOD merely
of finding that which man's relief requires, or instead of exhibiting
that method any longer _in the abstract_? Where are the works in which
he undertakes to show it in operation, with its new 'grappling hooks'
on the matter of the human life--applied by the inventor himself to
'the noblest subjects?' Surely that would be a sight to see. What is
the reason that our editors do not produce these so important works in
their editions? What is the reason that our critics do not include
them in their criticism? What is the reason that our scholars do not
quote them? Instead of stopping with that mere report of the condition
of learning and its deficiences, and that outline of what is to be
done, which makes the FIRST PART or Introduction to this work; or
stopping with the description of the new method, or the Novum Organum,
which makes the SECOND; why don't they go on to the 'new philosophy
itself,' and show us that as well,--the very object of all this
preparation? When he describes in the SECOND part his _method_ of
finding true terms, or rather the method of his school, when he
describes this new method of finding '_ideas_,' ideas as they are in
nature, powers, causes, the elements of history, or _forms_, as he
more commonly calls them, when he describes this new method of
deducing axioms, axioms that are ready for practice, he does, indeed,
give us _instances_; but it so happens, that the instances are all of
_one kind_ there. They are the physical powers that supply his
examples in that part.

In describing this method merely, he produces what he calls his Tables
of Invention, or Tables of REVIEW OF INSTANCES; but where is that part
in which he tells us we shall find these same tables again, with 'the
nobler subjects' on them? He produces them for careful scrutiny in his
second part; and he makes no small parade in bringing them in. He
shews them up very industriously, and is very particular to direct the
admiring attention of the reader to their adaptation as means to an
end. But certainly there is nothing in that specimen of what can be
done with them which he contents himself with there, that would lead
any one to infer that the power of this invention, which is the
novelty of it, was going to be a dangerous thing to society, or,
indeed, that they were not the most harmless things in the world. It
is the true cause of HEAT, and the infallible means of producing that
under the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be
trying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in that, or in
any other discovery of that kind. And there is no real impression made
on any one's mind by that book, that there is any other kind of
invention or discovery intended in the practical applications of this
method? The very free, but of course not pedantic, use of the new
terminology of a new school in philosophy, in which this author
indulges--a terminology of a somewhat figurative and poetic kind, one
cannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn of
mind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so entirely, to
construct; his continued preference for these new scholastic terms,
and his inflexible adherence to a most profoundly erudite mode of
expression whenever he approaches 'the part operative' of his work, is
indeed calculated to awe and keep at a distance minds not yet prepared
to grapple formally with those 'nobler subjects' to which allusion is
made in another place. King James was a man of some erudition himself;
but he declared frankly that for his part he could not understand this
book; and it was not strange that he could not, for the author did not
intend that he should. The philosopher drops a hint in passing,
however, that all which is essential in this method, might perhaps be
retained without quite so much formality and fuss in the use of it,
and that the proposed result might be arrived at by means of these
same tables, without any use of technical language at all, under other
circumstances.

The results which have since been obtained by the use of this method
in that department of philosophy to which it is specially applied in
the Novum Organum, give to the inquirer into the causes of the
physical phenomena now, some advantages which no invention could
supply them. That was what the founders of this philosophy expected
and predicted. They left this department to their school. The author
of the Novum Organum orders and initiates this inquiry; but the basis
of the induction in this department is as yet wanting; and the
collections and experiments here require combinations of skill and
labour which they cannot at once command. They will do what they can
here too, in their small way, just to make a beginning; but they do
not lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of
their own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient
purpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic
importance.

But the man who has studiously created for himself a social position
which enables him to assume openly, and even ostentatiously, the
position of an innovator--an innovator _in the world of letters_, an
advancer of--_learning_--is compelled to introduce his innovation with
the complaint that he finds the mind of the world so stupified, so
bewildered with evil, and so under the influence of dogmas, that the
first thing to be done is to get so much as a thought admitted of the
possibility of a better state of things. 'The present system of
philosophy,' he says, 'cherishes in its bosom certain positions or
dogmas which it will be found, are calculated to produce a full
conviction that no difficult, commanding, and powerful operation on
nature _ought_ to be anticipated, through the means of art.' And,
therefore, after criticising the theory and practice of the world as
he finds it, reporting as well as he can,--though he can find no
words, he says, in which to do justice to his feeling in regard to
it--_the deficiencies_ in its learning, he devotes a considerable
portion of the description of his new method to the grounds of 'hope'
which he derives from this philosophic survey, and that that hope is
not a hope of a better state of things in respect to the physical
wants of man merely, that it is not a hope of a renovation in the arts
which minister to those wants exclusively, any very careful reader of
the first book of the Novum Organum will be apt on the whole to infer.
But the statements here are very general, and he refers us to another
place _for particulars_.

'Let us then speak of _hope_' he says, '_especially_ as we are not
vain promisers, nor are willing to enforce or ensnare men's judgments;
but would rather lead them _willingly_ forward. And although we shall
employ the most cogent means of _enforcing hope when we bring them_ TO
PARTICULARS, and _especially_ those which are digested and arranged in
our Tables of Invention, the subject partly of the SECOND,
but--_principally_--mark it, _principally_ of the FOURTH part of the
Instauration, which are, indeed, rather the very objects of our hopes
than hope itself.' Does he dare to tell us, in this very connection,
that he is _not_ a vain promiser, when no such PART as that to which
he refers us here is to be found anywhere among his writings--when
this _principal_ part of his promise remains unfulfilled. 'The FOURTH
part of the Instauration,' he says again in his formal description of
it, 'enters upon philosophy itself, furnishing _examples of inquiry
and investigation_, according to our own method, _in certain subjects
of the noblest kind_, but greatly differing from each other, that a
specimen may be had of _every sort_. By these examples, we mean _not
illustrations of rules and precepts_,' [He will show the facts in such
order, in such scientific, select, methodical arrangements, that rules
and precepts will be forced from them; for he will show them, on the
tables of invention, and rules and precepts are the vintage that flows
from the illustrious instances--the prerogative instances--the ripe,
large, cleared, selected clusters of facts, the subtle prepared
history which the tables of invention collect. The definition of the
simple original elements of history, the pure definition is the first
vintage from these; but 'that which in speculative philosophy
corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule'
and _the axiom of practice_, ready for use, is the final result.] 'but
perfect models, which will exemplify the SECOND PART of this work, and
represent, as it were, to _the eye_ the whole progress of the mind,
and _the continued structure and order of invention_ in THE MORE
CHOSEN SUBJECTS'--note it, in the _more_ chosen subjects; but this is
not at all--'_after the same manner as globes and machines facilitate
the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics_.' But in
another place he tells us, that the poetic form of demonstration is
the form to which it is necessary to have recourse on these subjects,
_especially_ when we come to these more abstruse and subtle
demonstrations, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human
understanding in all new discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the
road of vulgar opinion; and that at the time he was writing out this
plan of his works, any one, who would let in new light on the human
understanding, and conquer prejudices, without raising animosity,
opposition, or disturbance, had no choice--_must go in that same
path_, or none. Where are those diagrams? And what does he mean, when
he tells us in this connection that he is not a vain promiser? Where
are those particular cases, in which this method of investigation is
applied to the noblest subjects? Where are the diagrams, in which the
order of the investigation is represented, as it were, to the eye,
which serve the same purpose, 'that globes and machines serve in the
more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics?' We are all
acquainted with one poem, at least, published about that time, in
which some very abstruse and subtle investigations appear to be in
progress, _not_ without the use of diagrams, and very lively ones too;
but one in which the intention of the poet appears to be to the last
degree 'enigmatical,' inasmuch as it has engaged the attention of the
most philosophical minds ever since, and inasmuch as the most able
critics have never been able to comprehend that intention fully in
their criticism. And it is bound up with many others, in which the
subjects are not less carefully chosen, and in which the method of
inquiry is the same; in which that same method that is exhibited in
the 'Novum Organum' in the abstract, or in its application to the
investigation of the physical phenomena, is everywhere illustrated in
the most chosen subjects--in subjects of the noblest kind. This
volume, and another which has been mentioned here, contain the THIRD
and FOURTH PARTS of the Great Instauration, whether this man who
describes them here, and who forgot, it would seem, to fulfil his
promise in reference to them, be aware of it or not.

That is the part of the Great Instauration that we want now, and we
are fairly entitled to it, because these are not 'the next ages,' or
'the times which were nearer,' and which this author seldom speaks of
without betraying his clear foresight of the political and social
convulsions that were then at hand. These are the times, which were
farther off, to which he appeals from those nearer ages, and to which
he expressly dedicates the opening of his designs.

Now, what is it that we have to find? What is it that is missing out
of this philosophy? Nothing less than the 'principal' part of it. All
that is good for anything in it, according to the author's own
estimate. The rest serves merely 'to pass the time,' or it is good as
it serves to prepare the way for this. What is it that we have to look
for? The 'Novum Organum,' that severe, rigorous method of scientific
inquiry, applied to _the more chosen subjects_ in the reigns of Queen
Elizabeth and James I. Tables of Review of Instances, and all that
Logic which is brought out in the doctrine of the PREROGATIVE
INSTANCES, whereby the mind of man is prepared for its encounter with
fact in general, brought down to particulars, and applied to the
noblest subjects, and to every sort of subject which the philosophic
mind of that age _chose_ to apply it to. That is what we want to find.

'The prerogative instances' in 'the _more_ chosen subjects.' The whole
field which that philosophy chose for its field, and called the
noblest, the principal, the chosen, the more chosen one. Every part of
it reduced to scientific inquiry, put under the rule of the 'Novum
Organum'; that is what we want to find. We know that no such thing
could possibly be found in the acknowledged writings of this author.
Nothing answering to that description, composed by a statesman and a
philosopher, with an avowed intention in his writing--an intention to
effect changes, too, in the actual condition of men, and 'to suborn
practice and actual life,' no such work by such an author could by any
means have been got through the press then. No one who studies the
subject will think of looking for that FOURTH PART of the Instauration
among the author's acknowledged writings. Does he give us any hint as
to where we are to look for it? Is there any intimation as to the
particular form of writing in which we are to find it? for find it we
must and shall, because he is _not_ a vain promiser. The _subject_
itself determines the form, he says; and the fact that the whole
ground of the discovery is ground already necessarily comprehended in
the preconceptions of the many--that it is ground covered all over
with the traditions and rude theories of unlearned ages, this fact,
also, imperiously determines the method of the inculcation. Who that
knows what the so-called Baconian method of learning really is, will
need to be told that the principal books of it will be--books of
INSTANCES and PARTICULARS, SPECIMENS--living ones, and that these will
occupy the prominent place in the book; and that the conclusions and
precepts will come in as abstractions from these, drawn freshly and on
the spot from particulars, and, therefore, ready for use, 'knowing the
way to particulars again?' Who would ever expect to find the principal
books of this learning--the books in which it enters upon philosophy
itself, and undertakes to leave a specimen of its own method in the
noblest subjects in its own chosen field--who would ever expect to
find these books, books of abstractions, books of precepts, with
instances or examples brought in, to illustrate or make them good? For
this is not a point of method merely, but a point of substance, as he
takes pains to tell us. And who that has ever once read his own
account of the method in which he proposes to _win_ the human mind
from its preconceptions, instead of undertaking to overcome it with
Logic and sharp disputations,--who that knows what place he gives to
Rhetoric, what place he gives to the Imagination in his scheme of
innovation, will expect to find these books, books of a dry didactic
learning? Does the student know how many times, in how many forms,
under how many different heads, he perseveringly inserts the bold
assurance, that the form of poesy and enigmatic allusive writing is
the _only_ form in which the higher applications of his discovery can
be made to any purpose in that age? Who would expect to find this part
in any professedly scientific work, when he tells us expressly,
'Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit,' as the examples
which his scientific terminology includes in the department of
_Poesy?_

All the old historical wisdom was in that form, he says; all the first
philosophy was poetical; all the old divinity came in history and
parable; and even to this day, he who would let in new light upon the
human understanding, without raising opposition or disturbance, must
still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method.

He was an innovator; he was _not_ an agitator. And he claims that mark
of a divine presence in his work, that its benefactions come, without
noise or perturbation, _in aura leni_. Of innovations, there has been
none in history like that which he propounded, but neither would he
strive nor cry. There was no voice in the streets, there was no red
ensign lifted, there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's
drum to signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine
authority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of God. It is
the providential order of the world's history which is revealed in it;
it is the fulfilment of ancient prophecy which this new chief, laden
with new gifts for men, openly announces.

'Let us begin from God,' he says, when he begins to open his ground of
_hope_, after he has exposed the wretched condition of men as he finds
them, without any scientific knowledge of the laws and institutes of
the universe they inhabit, engaged in a perpetual and mad collision
with them; 'Let us begin from God, and show that our pursuit, from its
exceeding goodness, _clearly_ proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD
and Father of LIGHT. Now, _in all divine works_, the smallest
beginnings lead assuredly to some results; and the rule in spiritual
matters, that the Kingdom of God cometh without observation, is also
found to be true _in every great work of_ PROVIDENCE, so that
everything glides in quietly, without confusion or noise; and the
matter is achieved before men even think of perceiving that it is
commenced.' 'Men,' he tells us, 'men should imitate Nature, who
innovateth _greatly_ but _quietly_, and by degrees scarce to be
perceived,' who will not dispense with the old form till the new one
is finished and in its place.

What is that we want to find? We want to find the new method of
scientific inquiry applied to the questions in which men are most
deeply interested--questions which were then imperiously and instantly
urged on the thoughtful mind. We want to see it applied to POLITICS in
the reign of James the First. We want to see it applied to the open
questions of another department of inquiry,--certainly not any less
important,--in that reign, and in the reign which preceded it. We want
to see the facts sifted through those scientific tables of review,
from which the true form of SOVEREIGNTY, the _legitimate_ sovereignty,
is to be inducted, and the scientific axioms of government with it. We
want to see the science of observation and experiment, the science of
nature in general, applied to the cure of the common-weal in the reign
of James the First, and to that particular crisis in its disease, in
which it appeared to the observers to be at its last gasp; and that,
too, by the principal doctors in that profession,--men of the very
largest experience in it, who felt obliged to pursue their work
conscientiously, whether the patient _objected_ or not. But are there
any such books as these? Certainly. You have the author's own word for
it. 'Some may raise this question,' he says, 'this _question_ rather
than _objection_'--[it is better that it should come in the form of a
_question_, than in the form of _an objection_, as it would have come,
if there had been no room to '_raise the question_']--'_whether we
talk_ of perfecting _natural philosophy_' [using the term here in its
usual limited sense], 'whether we talk of perfecting natural
philosophy _alone_, according to our method, or, _the other_
sciences--_such as_, ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' _That_ is the question
'raised.' 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' _That_ is _the
author's_ answer to it. 'And as _common logic_ which _regulates
matters by syllogism_, is applied, not only to natural, but to every
other science, _so_ our inductive method _likewise_ comprehends them
ALL.' With such iteration will he think fit to give us this point. It
is put in here for those 'who raise the question'--the question
'rather than objection.' The other sort are taken care of in other
places. '_For_,' he continues, 'we form a history and tables of
invention, for _anger, fear, shame,_ and _the like_; and _also for
examples in civil life_' [that was to be the principal part of the
science when he laid out the plan of it in the advancement of
learning] 'and the _mental_ operations of _memory, composition,
division, judgment_, and the rest; _as well_ as for _heat_ and _cold,
light_ and _vegetation_, and _the like_.' That is the plan of the new
science, as the author sketches it for the benefit of those who raise
questions rather than objections. That is its comprehension precisely,
whenever he undertakes to mark out its limits for the satisfaction of
this class of readers. But this is that same FOURTH PART to which he
refers us in the other places for the application of his method to
those nobler subjects, those more chosen subjects; and that is just
the part of his science which appears to be wanting. How happens it?
Did he get so occupied with the question of _heat_ and _cold_, _light_
and vegetation, and _the like_, that after all he forgot this part
with its nobler applications? How could that be, when he tells us
expressly, that they are the more chosen subjects of his inquiry. This
part which he speaks of here, is the missing part of his philosophy,
unquestionably. These are the books of it which have been missing
hitherto; but in that Providential order of events to which he refers
himself, the time has come for them to be inquired for; and this
inquiry is itself a part of that movement, in which the smallest
beginnings lead assuredly to some result. For, 'let us begin from
God,' he says, 'and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding
goodness, clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD, and not of
misery; the Father of LIGHT, and not of darkness.'

Of course, it was impossible to get out any scientific doctrine of the
human society, without coming at once in collision with that doctrine
of the divinity of arbitrary power which the monarchs of England were
then openly sustaining. Who needs to be told, that he who would handle
that argument scientifically, then, without military weapons, as this
inquirer _would_, must indeed 'pray in aid of _similes_.' And yet a
very searching and critical inquiry into the claims of that
institution, which the new philosophy found in possession of the human
welfare, and asserting a divine right to it as a thing of private
property and legitimate family inheritance,--such a criticism was, in
fact, inevitably involved in that inquiry into the principles of a
_human_ subjection which appeared to this philosopher to belong
properly to the more chosen subjects of a scientific investigation.

And notwithstanding the delicacy of the subjects, and the extremely
critical nature of the investigation, when it came to touch those
particulars, with which the personal observations and experiments of
the founders of this new school in philosophy had tended to enrich
their collections in this department,--'and the aim is better,' says
the principal spokesman of this school, who quietly proposes to
introduce this method into _politics_, 'the aim is better _when the
mark is alive_;' notwithstanding the difficulties which appeared to
lie then in the way of such an investigation, the means of conducting
it to the entire satisfaction, and, indeed, to the large entertainment
of the persons chiefly concerned, were not wanting. For this was one
of those 'secrets of policy,' which have always required the aid of
fable, and the idea of _dramatising_ the fable for the sake of
reaching in some sort those who are incapable of receiving any thing
'which does not directly fall under, and strike the senses,' as the
philosopher has it; those who are capable of nothing but 'dumb shows
and noise,' as Hamlet has it; this idea, though certainly a very
happy, was not with these men an original one. Men, whose relations to
the state were not so different as the difference in the forms of
government would perhaps lead us to suppose,--men of the gravest
learning and enriched with the choicest accomplishments of their time,
had adopted that same method of influencing public opinion, some two
thousand years earlier, and even as long before as that, there were
'secrets of morality and policy,' to which this form of writing
appeared to offer the most fitting veil.

Whether 'the new' philosopher,--whether 'the new magician' of this
time, was, in fact, in possession of any art which enabled him to
handle without diffidence or scruple the great political question
which was then already the question of the time; whether 'THE
CROWN'--that double crown of military conquest and priestly
usurpation, which was the one estate of the realm at that crisis in
English history, did, among other things in some way, come under the
edges of that new analysis which was severing _all_ here then, and get
divided clearly with 'the mind, that divine fire,'--whether any such
thing as that occurred here then, the reader of the following pages
will be able to judge. The careful reader of the extracts they
contain, taken from a work of practical philosophy which made its
appearance about those days, will certainly have no difficulty at all
in deciding that question. For, first of all, it is necessary to find
that political key to the Elizabethan art of delivery, which unlocks
the great works of the Elizabethan philosophy, and that is the
necessity which determines the selection of the Plays that are
produced in this volume. They are brought in to illustrate the fact
already stated, and already demonstrated, the fact which is the
subject of this volume, the fact that the new practical philosophy of
the modern ages, which has its beginning here, was not limited, in the
plan of its founders, to 'natural philosophy' and 'the part operative'
of that,--the fact that it comprehended, as its principal department,
the department in which its 'noblest subjects' lay, and in which its
most vital innovations were included, a field of enquiry which could
not then be entered without the aid of fable and parable, and one
which required not then only, 'but now, and at all times,' the aid of
a vivid poetic illustration; they are brought in to illustrate the
fact already demonstrated from other sources, the fact that the new
philosophy was the work of men able to fulfil their work under such
conditions, able to work, if not for the times that were nearer, for
the times that were further off; men who thought it little so they
could fulfil and perfect their work and make their account of it to
the Work-master, to robe another with their glory; men who could
relinquish the noblest works of the human genius, that they might save
them from the mortal stabs of an age of darkness, that they might make
them over unharmed in their boundless freedom, in their unstained
perfection, to the farthest ages of the advancement of learning,--that
they might 'teach them how to live and look fresh' still,

  'When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent.'

That is the one fact, the indestructible fact, which this book is to
demonstrate.

PART I.

LEAR'S PHILOSOPHER

                           'Thou'dst shun a bear;
  But if thy way lay towards the raging sea,
  Thou'dst meet the bear i' the mouth.'

CHAPTER I.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE PALACE.

  'I think the king is but a man, as I am.'--_King Henry_.
  'They told me I was everything.'--_Lear_.

OF course, it was not possible that the prerogative should be openly
dealt with at such a time, questioned, discussed, scientifically
examined, in the very presence of royalty itself, except by persons
endowed with extraordinary privileges and immunities, persons, indeed,
of quite irresponsible authority, whose right to do and say what they
pleased, Elizabeth herself, though they should enter upon a critical
analysis of the divine rights of kings to her face, and deliberately
lay bare the defects in that title which she was then attempting to
maintain, must needs notwithstanding, concede and respect.

And such persons, as it happened, were not wanting in the retinue of
that sovereignty which was working in disguise here then, and laying
the foundations of that throne in the thoughts of men, which would
replace old principalities and powers, and not political dominions
merely. To the creative genius which waited on the philosophic mind of
that age, making up in the splendour of its gifts for the poverty of
its exterior conditions, such persons,--persons of any amount or
variety of capacity which the necessary question of its play might
require, were not wanting:--'came with a thought.'

Of course, poor Bolingbroke, fevered with the weight of his ill-got
crown, and passing a sleepless night in spite of its supposed
exemptions, unable to command on his state-bed, with all his royal
means and appliances, the luxury that the wet sea boy in the storm
enjoys,--and the poet appears, to have had some experience of this
mortal ill, which inclines him to put it down among those which ought
to be excluded from a state of supreme earthly felicity,--the poor
guilty disgusted usurper, discovering that this so blessed 'invention'
was not included in the prerogative he had seized, under the
exasperation of the circumstances, might surely be allowed to mutter
to himself, in the solitude of his own bed-chamber, a few general
reflections on the subject, and, indeed, disable his own position to
any extent, without expecting to be called to an account for it, by
any future son or daughter of his usurping lineage. That
extraordinary, but when one came to look at it, quite incontestable
fact, that nature in her sovereignty, imperial still, refused to
recognize this artificial difference in men, but still went on her way
in all things, as if 'the golden standard' were not there, classing
the monarch with his 'poorest subject;'--the fact that this charmed
'round of sovereignty,' did not after all secure the least exemption
from the common _individual_ human frailty, and helplessness,--this
would, of course, strike the usurper who had purchased the crown at
such an expense, as a fact in natural history worth communicating, if
it were only for the benefit of future princes, who might be disposed
to embark in a similar undertaking. Here, of course, the moral was
proper, and obvious enough; or close at hand, and ready to be
produced, in case any serious inquiry should be made for it; though
the poet might seem, perhaps, to a severely critical mind, disposed to
pursue his philosophical inquiry a little too curiously into the awful
secrets of majesty, retired within itself, and pondering its own
position;--openly searching what Lord Bacon reverently tells us, the
Scriptures pronounce to be inscrutable, namely, _the hearts_ of
_kings_, and audaciously laying bare those private passages, those
confessions, and misgivings, and frailties, for which policy and
reverence prescribe concealment, and which are supposed in the play,
indeed, to be shrouded from the profane and vulgar eye, a circumstance
which, of course, was expected to modify the impression.

So, too, that profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose, or a
violet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this sublime
position, very much as it did to another; a suspicion which, in the
mouth of a common man, would have been literally sufficient to 'make a
star-chamber matter of'; and all that thorough-going analysis of the
trick and pageant of majesty which follows it, would, of course, come
only as a graceful concession, from the mouth of that genuine piece of
royalty, who contrives to hide so much of the poet's own 'sovereignty
of nature,' under the mantle of his free and princely humours, the
brave and gentle hero of Agincourt.

'Though _I_ speak it to you,' he says, talking in the disguise of a
'private,' '_I think the King is but a man as I am_, the violet smells
to him as it doth to me; all his senses, _have but human conditions_.
His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness, he appears but a man; and
though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they
stoop, they stoop with the like wing. When he sees reason of fears, as
we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are';
and in the same scene, thus the royal philosopher versifies, and
soliloquises on the same delicate question.

'And what have _kings_ that "_privates_" have not, too, save
ceremony,--save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou _idol
ceremony?_--_What is_ thy _soul_ of _adoration_?'

A grave question, for a man of an inquiring habit of mind, in those
times: let us see how a Poet can answer it.

  'Art thou aught else but _place, degree_ and _form_,
  Creating awe and fear in _other men?_
  Wherein, thou _art less happy, being feared_,
  _Than they in fearing_?

[Again and again this man has told us, and on his oath, that he
cherished no evil intentions, no thought of harm to the king; and
those who know what criticisms on the state, as it was then, he had
authorised, and what changes in it he was certainly meditating and
preparing the way for, have charged him with falsehood and perjury on
that account; but this is what he means. He thinks that wretched
victim of that most irrational and monstrous state of things, on whose
head the crown of an arbitrary rule is placed, with all its
responsibilities, in his infinite unfitness for them, is, in fact, the
one whose case most of all requires relief. He is the one, in this
theory, who suffers from this unnatural state of things, not less, but
more, than his meanest subject. 'Thou art less happy being feared,
than they in fearing.']

  What drink'st thou oft _instead of homage sweet_
  But _poison'd flattery_? O! be sick, great greatness,
  And bid thy _ceremony_ give thee _cure_.
  Thinkest thou the _fiery fever will go out_
  With _titles blown from adulation_?
  Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

Interesting physiological questions! And though the author, for
reasons of his own, has seen fit to put them in blank verse here, it
is not because he does not understand, as we shall see elsewhere, that
they are questions of a truly scientific character, which require to
be put in prose in his time--questions of vital consequence to all
men. The effect of 'poisoned flattery,' and 'titles blown from
adulation' on the minds, of those to whose single will and caprice the
whole welfare of the state, and all the gravest questions for this
life and the next, were then entrusted, naturally appeared to the
philosophical mind, perseveringly addicted to inquiries, in which the
practical interests of men were involved, a question of gravest
moment.

But here it is the physical difference which accompanies this so
immense human distinction, which he appears to be in quest of; it is
the control over nature with which these '_farcical titles_' invest