pernicus and the magnetic investigations of
Gilbert. The contempt seems to have been fully returned by the
scientific workers of his day. "The Lord Chancellor wrote on science,"
said Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, "like a
Lord Chancellor."

In spite however of his inadequate appreciation either of the old
philosophy or the new, the almost unanimous voice of later ages has
attributed, and justly attributed, to the "Novum Organum" a decisive
influence on the developement of modern science. If he failed in
revealing the method of experimental research, Bacon was the first to
proclaim the existence of a Philosophy of Science, to insist on the
unity of knowledge and enquiry throughout the physical world, to give
dignity by the large and noble temper in which he treated them to the
petty details of experiment in which science had to begin, to clear a
way for it by setting scornfully aside the traditions of the past, to
claim for it its true rank and value, and to point to the enormous
results which its culture would bring in increasing the power and
happiness of mankind. In one respect his attitude was in the highest
degree significant. The age in which he lived was one in which theology
was absorbing the intellectual energy of the world. He was the servant
too of a king with whom theological studies superseded all others. But
if he bowed in all else to James, Bacon would not, like Casaubon, bow in
this. He would not even, like Descartes, attempt to transform theology
by turning reason into a mode of theological demonstration. He stood
absolutely aloof from it. Though as a politician he did not shrink from
dealing with such subjects as Church Reform, he dealt with them simply
as matters of civil polity. But from his exhaustive enumeration of the
branches of human knowledge he excluded theology, and theology alone.
His method was of itself inapplicable to a subject where the premisses
were assumed to be certain, and the results known. His aim was to seek
for unknown results by simple experiment. It was against received
authority and accepted tradition in matters of enquiry that his whole
system protested; what he urged was the need of making belief rest
strictly on proof, and proof rest on the conclusions drawn from evidence
by reason. But in theology--all theologians asserted--reason played but
a subordinate part. "If I proceed to treat of it," said Bacon, "I shall
step out of the bark of human reason