It would be difficult under any conditions, where space is limited it is impossible, to do justice to a character so complex and enigmatical as Bacon's. Pope's often-quoted line depicting him as the "wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," presents us with a monstrous compound of intellectual supremacy and moral depravity; in Macaulay's famous essay the swift sketch is expanded into an elaborate portrait, in which the genius of the man is painted in the most brilliant colors on the palette, the man himself in the very darkest. Pope and Macaulay together are probably in the main responsible for the antipathy in which Bacon is popularly held an antipathy which fuller knowledge of the individual and his times happily tends in some degree to modify. The student of Bacon would like to be able to say more than this. Yet, greatly as we should desire to see cleared once and for all the fame of one who has such enduring claims upon the world's gratitude and esteem, we must not lower even for him the standards by which character and conduct are to be measured. Magnificent as were his powers and equipment, splendid as were his purposes when, taking, in his own proud phrase, all knowledge for his province, he set out to benefit mankind by opening the way to truth, elements of weakness and baseness were deeply interwoven with the gigantic strength of his nature. has been said, was really a double one: the high-souled enthusiast for science, fired by the noble ambition of accomplishing something "for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate";

His life, as

the life of

and the life of the worldling and the self-seeker, eager for wealth and place, and little scrupulous concerning the means by which they were to be obtained. Thus the appalling tragedy of his entire career was the tragedy of a house divided against itself. At bottom, the fatal defect in his character seems to have been connected with a radical deficiency on the emotional side. He was too purely intellectual, too willing to live wholly and solely by the dry light of reason; and thus his being was never thrilled and warmed by those generous passions which lift men above the sordid things of the hour. Yet with all his failures and shortcomings in the practical conduct of life, he at least remained true to the high principles which governed his strenuous activities in philosophy and letters. He started out in life with certain great objects before him, and from the intellectual pathway he had marked out for himself he never so much as swerved.

The foregoing sketch, though but the briefest summary, will suffice to show that Bacon's was a singularly active and eventful life. It is not the least wonderful thing about this wonderful man that, with so large a part of his time and energy preoccupied by public business, he should have found opportunity for the production of those voluminous and weighty works, by virtue of which he has taken his place definitely among the world's greatest thinkers. It must be remembered, however, that no matter how much of himself he chose to give year by year to law and politics, his true bias was toward science and philos

ophy. Early in his career he wrote to Lord Burghley: "I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends;" and if the latter portion of this confession strikes us as being of doubtful accuracy, there is no question that the "vast contemplative ends" represented throughout the really vital interests of his life. Upon this matter he speaks even more clearly in the original dedication of the Essays to his brother Anthony, whom ill-health kept out of public affairs: "I assure you I sometimes wish your infirmities translated upon myself, that her Majesty might have the service of so active and able a mind; and that I might be, with excuse, confined to those contemplations and studies for which I am fittest." As Bacon viewed his own life, it is evident what he considered its central and abiding purposes, far and constantly as other interests compelled him to put these from his mind.

As they stand, then, his numerous and varied volumes with all their range of learning and depth of thought, must be regarded as the occupation, first of the leisure which he managed to make for himself in the turmoil of an active career, and then of that which was forced upon him after his fall. They separate themselves naturally into three general divisions- the professional; the scientific, and philosophical; and the historic and literary. Of all these, it is the scientific and philosophical works which have the largest claim upon attention; not at all, of course, because they are now the most interesting or instructive in themselves, but because by them Bacon marked

an epoch and opened a fresh chapter in thought. The method which he set himself to teach his contemporaries was not, indeed, wholly novel or untried; for Bacon, like other great iniators, had his forerunners and teachers. But the glory of having defined it, established it, forced it home, belongs entirely to him. Before his time, thinkers had been content to build their philosophical systems out of their own ideas and the traditions of the ancients; they had rested in authority; they had ignored nature, or, at best, been in the habit of rushing from a few scattered facts picked up here and there to hasty generalizations about the universe and its laws. Bacon showed that truth is not to be found in this way, but that to reach it, we must throw off the yoke of tradition, regard ourselves in all humility as the servants and interpreters of nature; observe patiently and warily; gather our data together through long and faithful study; and only when we have laid the foundations of fact strong and deep, attempt to raise thereupon the superstructure of our theories. This, put as simply and as briefly as possible, is what is meant by Bacon's inductive method. In place of guess-work, rash conjecture, random speculation, preconceived or inherited notions about things, he formulated the principles of rigid, independent observation, and the close and constant cross-examination of nature itself. In doing this, he exposed the inadequacy of the processes of the schoolroom, and became the originator of the modern scientific method. His position in the history of thought, then, is that of the opener of a new

nd fruitful way; and even though he failed to make effective use of his principles in his own work — even though his individual contributions to positive knowledge were few and relatively unimportant, his influence upon others and in after times was none the less far-reaching and profound. As he himself puts it, in characteristic phrase, he "rang the bell which called the other wits together." For this reason he is revered s one of the great masters of "those who know."

Thus much every one should understand about Bacon's historic position. But while most of us may Be contented to gather what we may at second hand oncerning his scientific and philosophical achievements, there is one portion of his writings with which we must become personally acquainted. This is the ittle volume containing his Essays. Even in his own lay these were, as he himself tells us, the "most current" of his works, "for that, as it seems," he xplains, unlike his more elaborate and special reatises, "they come home to men's business and posoms"; and since then, they have been something nore than popular. They have been commonly 'adjudged a place among the classics of the English tongue.

As Bacon's literary work as a whole, represents, as we have seen, the leisure energies of an extremely busy life, so the Essays in their turn are the productions of a margin of that leisure. They were written, according to his own statement, as a relief from his severer studies, though in this case the pastime of the idle hour was fed by the richest results of thought and