in the first. It was that in many
instances he exemplified in his own work the very faults which he
charged on the older philosophies: haste, carelessness, precipitancy,
using words without thinking them out, assuming to know when he ought to
have perceived his real ignorance.

What, then, with all these mistakes and failures, not always creditable
or pardonable, has given Bacon his preeminent place in the history of
science?

1. The answer is that with all his mistakes and failures, the principles
on which his mode of attaining a knowledge of nature was based were the
only true ones; and they had never before been propounded so
systematically, so fully, and so earnestly. His was not the first mind
on whom these principles had broken. Men were, and had been for some
time, pursuing their inquiries into various departments of nature
precisely on the general plan of careful and honest observation of real
things which he enjoined. They had seen, as he saw, the futility of all
attempts at natural philosophy by mere thinking and arguing, without
coming into contact with the contradictions or corrections or
verifications of experience. In Italy, in Germany, in England there were
laborious and successful workers, who had long felt that to be in touch
with nature was the only way to know. But no one had yet come before the
world to proclaim this on the house-tops, as the key of the only certain
path to the secrets of nature, the watchword of a revolution in the
methods of interpreting her; and this Bacon did with an imposing
authority and power which enforced attention. He spoke the thoughts of
patient toilers like Harvey with a largeness and richness which they
could not command, and which they perhaps smiled at. He disentangled and
spoke the vague thoughts of his age, which other men had not the courage
and clearness of mind to formulate. What Bacon _did_, indeed, and what
he _meant_, are separate matters. He _meant_ an infallible method by
which man should be fully equipped for a struggle with nature; he meant
an irresistible and immediate conquest, within a definite and not
distant time. It was too much. He himself saw no more of what he _meant_
than Columbus did of America. But what he _did_ was to persuade men for
the future that the intelligent, patient, persevering cross-examination
of things, and the thoughts about them, was the only, and was the
successful road to know. No one had yet done this, and he did it. His
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