nt; and that he thus
opened the path which modern science thenceforth followed, with its
amazing and unexhausted discoveries, and its vast and beneficent
practical results. We credit all this to Bacon, and assuredly not
without reason. All this is what was embraced in his vision of a changed
world of thought and achievement. All this is what was meant by that
_Regnum Hominis_, which, with a play on sacred words which his age did
not shrink from, and which he especially pleased himself with, marked
the coming of that hitherto unimagined empire of man over the powers and
forces which encompassed him. But the detail of all this is multifarious
and complicated, and is not always what we expect; and when we come to
see how his work is estimated by those who, by greatest familiarity with
scientific ideas and the history of scientific inquiries, are best
fitted to judge of it, many a surprise awaits us.

For we find that the greatest differences of opinion exist on the value
of what he did. Not only very unfavourable judgments have been passed
upon it, on general grounds--as an irreligious, or a shallow and
one-sided, or a poor and "utilitarian" philosophy, and on a definite
comparison of it with the actual methods and processes which as a matter
of history have been the real means of scientific discovery--but also
some of those who have most admired his genius, and with the deepest
love and reverence have spared no pains to do it full justice, have yet
come to the conclusion that as an instrument and real method of work
Bacon's attempt was a failure. It is not only De Maistre and Lord
Macaulay who dispute his philosophical eminence. It is not only the
depreciating opinion of a contemporary like Harvey, who was actually
doing what Bacon was writing about. It is not only that men who after
the long history of modern science have won their place among its
leaders, and are familiar by daily experience with the ways in which it
works--a chemist like Liebig, a physiologist like Claude Bernard--say
that they can find nothing to help them in Bacon's methods. It is not
only that a clear and exact critic like M. de Remusat looks at his
attempt, with its success and failure, as characteristic of English,
massive, practical good sense rather than as marked by real
philosophical depth and refinement, such as Continental thinkers point
to and are proud of in Descartes and Leibnitz. It is not even that a
competent master of the whole domain