explained without resorting to any mysterious
law. [Footnote: Nov. Org. i. 92 sqq.] Progress has not been steady or
continuous on account of the prejudices and errors which hindered men
from setting to work in the right way. The difficulties in advancing did
not arise from things which are not in our power; they were due to the
human understanding, which wasted time and labour on improper objects.
"In proportion as the errors which have been committed impeded the past,
so do they afford reason to hope for the future."

4.

But will the new period of advance, which Bacon expected and strove to
secure, be of indefinite duration? He does not consider the question.
His view that he lived in the old age of the world implies that he did
not anticipate a vast tract of time before the end of mankind's career
on earth. And an orthodox Christian of that time could hardly be
expected to predict. The impression we get is that, in his sanguine
enthusiasm, he imagined that a "prudent interrogation" of nature could
extort all her secrets in a few generations. As a reformer he was so
engaged in the immediate prospect of results that his imagination did
not turn to the possibilities of a remoter future, though these would
logically follow from his recognition of "the inseparable propriety of
time which is ever more and more to disclose truth." He hopes everything
from his own age in which learning has made her third visitation to the
world, a period which he is persuaded will far surpass that of Grecian
and Roman learning. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. 24.] If he could have
revisited England in 1700 and surveyed what science had performed since
his death his hopes might have been more than satisfied.

But, animated though he was with the progressive spirit, as Leonardo
da Vinci had been before him, all that he says of the prospects of an
increase of knowledge fails to amount to the theory of Progress. He
prepares the way, he leads up to it; but his conception of his own time
as the old age of humanity excludes the conception of an indefinite
advance in the future, which is essential if the theory is to have
significance and value. And in regard to progress in the past, though he
is clearer and more emphatic than Bodin, he hardly adds anything to what
Bodin had observed. The novelty of his view lies not in his recognition
of the advance of knowledge and its power to advance still further, but
in the purpose which he assigned to it. [Foot