utilitarianism to be keenly alive to the needs and pains of life, and
to be eager and busy to lighten and assuage them, Bacon's philosophy was
not utilitarian. It may deserve many reproaches, but not this one. Such
a passage as the following--in which are combined the highest motives
and graces and passions of the soul, love of truth, humility of mind,
purity of purpose, reverence for God, sympathy for man, compassion for
the sorrows of the world and longing to heal them, depth of conviction
and faith--fairly represents the spirit which runs through his works.
After urging the mistaken use of imagination and authority in science,
he goes on--

"There is not and never will be an end or limit to this; one
catches at one thing, another at another; each has his favourite
fancy; pure and open light there is none; every one philosophises
out of the cells of his own imagination, as out of Plato's cave;
the higher wits with more acuteness and felicity, the duller, less
happily, but with equal pertinacity. And now of late, by the
regulation of some learned and (as things now are) excellent men
(the former license having, I suppose, become wearisome), the
sciences are confined to certain and prescribed authors, and thus
restrained are imposed upon the old and instilled into the young;
so that now (to use the sarcasm of Cicero concerning Caesar's year)
the constellation of Lyra rises by edict, and authority is taken
for truth, not truth for authority. Which kind of institution and
discipline is excellent for present use, but precludes all prospect
of improvement. For we copy the sin of our first parents while we
suffer for it. They wished to be like God, but their posterity wish
to be even greater. For we create worlds, we direct and domineer
over nature, we will have it that all things _are_ as in our folly
we think they should be, not as seems fittest to the Divine wisdom,
or as they are found to be in fact; and I know not whether we more
distort the facts of nature or of our own wits; but we clearly
impress the stamp of our own image on the creatures and works of
God, instead of carefully examining and recognising in them the
stamp of the Creator himself. Wherefore our dominion over creatures
is a second time forfeited, not undeservedly; and whereas after the
fall of man some power over the resistance