all the world to the 'new birth of Time.'

[Sidenote: The defect of his method.]

But it is not easy to discover satisfactory evidence that the 'Novum
Organum' had any direct beneficial influence on the advancement of
natural knowledge. No delusion is greater than the notion that method
and industry can make up for lack of motherwit, either in science or
in practical life; and it is strange that, with his knowledge of
mankind, Bacon should have dreamed that his, or any other, 'via
inveniendi scientias' would 'level men's wits' and leave little scope
for that inborn capacity which is called genius. As a matter of fact,
Bacon's 'via' has proved hopelessly impracticable; while the
'anticipation of nature' by the invention of hypotheses based on
incomplete inductions, which he specially condemns, has proved itself
to be a most efficient, indeed an indispensable, instrument of
scientific progress. Finally, that transcendental alchemy--the
superinducement of new forms on matter--which Bacon declares to be the
supreme aim of science, has been wholly ignored by those who have
created the physical knowledge of the present day.

Even the eloquent advocacy of the Chancellor brought no unmixed good
to physical science. It was natural enough that the man who, in his
better moments, took 'all knowledge for his patrimony,' but, in his
worse, sold that birthright for the mess of pottage of Court favor and
professional success, for pomp and show, should be led to attach an
undue value to the practical advantages which he foresaw, as Roger
Bacon and, indeed, Seneca had foreseen, long before his time, must
follow in the train of the advancement of natural knowledge. The
burden of Bacon's pleadings for science is the gathering of