is ancillary to it.[29] And
of all branches of learning, two are of chief importance: languages are
the first gate of wisdom; mathematics the second.[30] By means of
foreign tongues we gain the wisdom which men have collected in past
times and other countries; and without them the sciences are not to be
pursued, for the requisite books are wanting in the Latin tongue. Even
theology must fail without a knowledge of the original texts of the
Sacred Writings and of their earliest expositors. Mathematics are of
scarcely less importance; "for he who knows not mathematics cannot know
any other physical science,--what is more, cannot discover his own
ignorance or find its proper remedies." "The sciences cannot be known by
logical and sophistical arguments, such as are commonly used, but only
by mathematical demonstrations."[31] But this view of the essential
importance of these two studies did not prevent Bacon from rising to the
height from which he beheld the mutual importance and relations of all
knowledge. We do not know where to find a clearer statement of the
connection of the sciences than in the following words:--"All sciences
are connected, and support each other with mutual aid, as parts of the
same whole, of which each performs its work, not for itself alone, but
for the others as well: as the eye directs the whole body, and the foot
supports the whole; so that any part of knowledge taken from the rest is
like an eye torn out or a foot cut off."[32]

Such, then, in brief, appears to have been Bacon's general system of
philosophy. He has nowhere presented it in a compact form; and his style
of writing is often so corrupt, and his use of terms so inexact, that
any exposition of his views, exhibiting them in a methodical
arrangement, is liable to the charge of possessing a definiteness of
statement beyond that which his opinions had assumed in his own mind.
Still, the view that has now been given of his philosophy corresponds as
nearly as may be with the indications afforded by his works. The details
of his system present many points of peculiar interest. He was not
merely a theorist, with speculative views of a character far in advance
of those of the mass of contemporary schoolmen, but a practical
investigator as well, who by his experiments and discoveries pushed
forward the limits of knowledge, and a sound scholar who saw and
displayed to others the true means by which progress in learning was to
be secured. In th