en beginning to be cultivated with high promise of
success--the knowledge of the heavens--he speaks with a coldness and
suspicion which contrasts remarkably with his eagerness about things
belonging to the sphere of the earth and within reach of the senses. He
holds, of course, the unity of the world; the laws of the whole visible
universe are one order; but the heavens, wonderful as they are to him,
are--compared with other things--out of his track of inquiry. He had his
astronomical theories; he expounded them in his "_Descriptio Globi
Intellectualis_" and his _Thema Coeli_ He was not altogether ignorant of
what was going on in days when Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo were at
work. But he did not know how to deal with it, and there were men in
England, before and then, who understood much better than he the
problems and the methods of astronomy. He had one conspicuous and
strange defect for a man who undertook what he did. He was not a
mathematician: he did not see the indispensable necessity of mathematics
in the great _Instauration_ which he projected; he did not much believe
in what they could do. He cared so little about them that he takes no
notice of Napier's invention of Logarithms. He was not able to trace how
the direct information of the senses might be rightly subordinated to
the rational, but not self-evident results of geometry and arithmetic.
He was impatient of the subtleties of astronomical calculations; they
only attempted to satisfy problems about the motion of bodies in the
sky, and told us nothing of physical fact; they gave us, as Prometheus
gave to Jove, the outside skin of the offering, which was stuffed inside
with straw and rubbish. He entirely failed to see that before dealing
with physical astronomy, it must be dealt with mathematically. "It is
well to remark," as Mr. Ellis says, "that none of Newton's astronomical
discoveries could have been made if astronomers had not continued to
render themselves liable to Bacon's censure." Bacon little thought that
in navigation the compass itself would become a subordinate instrument
compared with the helps given by mathematical astronomy. In this, and in
other ways, Bacon rose above his time in his conceptions of what _might
be_, but not of what _was_; the list is a long one, as given by Mr.
Spedding (iii. 511), of the instances which show that he was
ill-informed about the advances of knowledge in his own time. And his
mind was often not clear when he