sets it on the forefront of his comprehensive survey, and the lamented Tyndall, with literary graces only less unique than those of his master, are at one with historians like Hallam in proclaiming him the first mover in a mighty impulse. Bacon's self-criticism is sound, " Fungar vice cotis acutum reddere quæ ferrum valet expers ipsa secandi." He sharpened the instruments for others to use; he pointed the path which he could not follow, to the walls of the citadel he failed to storm. His claim to have moved the intellects that move the world does not rest alone on his forecasts of discovery. He opened a way to "unpathed waters, undreamed shores," by training his contemporaries to habits of observation which he first set on a rank of equal dignity with abstract thought. He invented nothing, but he called the Sciences back to their sources, and so, in the phrase of Rémusat," threw out a thought full of the future." His predecessors spoke in lower tones. It was only Bacon's enthusiasm, through half a century maintained, his dauntless tenacity and his splendid powers of speech that first gave to modern science wings to make way through the minds of men. Nor Leonardo nor Galileo had his far-ranging view of the Unity of Nature and of Science, or of the ultimate consilience of knowledge and practical power. His rubric was all things by scale to unity." His perception of analogies, however " portentous," led him right in tracing a nexus in the scheme of things. Bacon reflects and repeats the old vague efforts in the same direction, from Heraclitus's finer fire, the start and goal of the way up and down, to Plato's Triads; from the speculations on phenomena and noumena that ran through the period from Xenocrates to Zeno, to the metaphysical paradigms of the medieval realists, physically realised in Owen's archetypal skeleton. But, with all its uncritical want of precision, his own view is no mere summary: it is a real, though sometimes shadowy premonition of the later discoveries that have linked together, under the conception of the "Correlation of Forces," the polarity of magnetism, the spark of electricity, the affinity of chemical elements and of crystalline poles, the unification of heat, light and picture-rendering rays as undulations of the universal air. Similar conceptions are embodied in Schelling's "Harmonies of Nature" and the comprehensive anticipation of Hegel, "Magnetism is the universal act of investing multiplicity with unity"; but they are nowhere clad in such imaginative reality as in Bacon's extension of the world by the revelation of an unseen universe, a Fairyland of Science in which "we are citizens of no mean city." The epochs of Comte revolve, but in widening circles, as the positive again merges in the religious. The Greeks followed a mirage of the land they never reached. The forces of Nature address the child in images and myths; Heaven lies about him, because his fancies do not transcend the dome of blue; and he sees in the twilight the celestial gates. The stars to him are gods, and make a sphery chime. Later, "the intellectual power through words and things pursues its dim and perilous way "to the same goal, and nature once more appears as the garment of divinity. The world is one; one law, one element" is the first utterance and the last, the Alpha and Omega of philosophy; but at the close the fictitious has been exchanged for the real, when Faith, Fancy and Truth are blended in a higher metaphysics. He His These ideas are common to Bacon with other theorists. stands by himself in his belief in being able to make them live. philosophy is no Oeopía or dream; but a ministration to the wants of the mankind he loved with a philanthropy often inconsistent with personal devotion. With him knowledge alone had no satiety; in age, when the Loves are changed into the Graces, he ran the race as in the heyday, never feeling the weariness of Faust, and only at times the suave mari magno. His philosophy has its concrete presentation in the New Atlantis,' that rises from the sea in our memories, like Prospero's Isle, the most practical and among the most poetic of the anticipations of the future. It is an allegory of his fragmentary work; and, in closing the records of his varied life, we linger on the sound of the sea rippling by the beach of its richly coloured shore. Its details may be faulty, its design is prophetic; nor in Plato or Augustine, nor in More or Sidney, Campanella or Milton is there so much sympathy with our increasing purpose, combined with so much sense of its limitations. Bacon never soars away from life, he realises its complexity, its temptations and the indefinite range of its aggregate power. Like Shakespeare, he "puts a girdle round the world," and has left a name not to "point a moral or adorn a tale," but to be a beacon as well as a warning from one who, in a sense of the infanti perduti, has also been among the eternal benefactors of his race. [J. N.] VOL. XIV. (No. 88.) P WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, February 23, 1894. PROFESSOR DAVID EDWARD HUGHES, F.R.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. PROFESSOR SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, D.Sc. F.R.S. M.R.I. [Abstract deferred.] WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, March 2, 1894. SIR DOUGLAS GALTON, K.C.B. D.C.L. LL.D. F.R.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. PROFESSOR JOHN G. MCKENDRICK, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. The Theory of the Cochlea and the Inner Ear. [No Abstract.] GENERAL MONTHLY MEETING, Monday, March 5, 1894. SIR JAMES CRICHTON-BROWNE, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair. Edward Henry Cardwell, Esq. J. Dundas Grant, M.D. F.R.C.S. Alexander T. Hollingsworth, Esq. Robert Trefusis Mallet, Esq. M.Inst.C.E. Percy Alport Molteno, Esq. B.A. LL.B. Charles E. S. Phillips, Esq. The Hon. Lionel Walter Rothschild, J. Cranefield Scholey, Esq. Arthur Talbot, Esq. were elected Members of the Royal Institution. The Special Thanks of the Members were returned to Mrs. Rao for her present of a Portrait of the late Dr. John Rae, M.R.I. The following Arrangements for the Lectures after Easter were announced: PROFESSOR J. A. FLEMING, M.A. D.Sc. F.R.S. M.R.I. Professor of Electrical Engineering in University College, London.-Four Lectures on ELECTRIC ILLUMINATION; on Tuesdays, April 3, 10, 17, 24. PROFESSOR J. W. JUDD, F.R.S. V.P.G.S.-Three Lectures on RUBIES: THEIR NATURE, Origin, and METAMORPHOSES; on Tuesdays, May 1, 8, 15. THE REV. W. H. DALLINGER, LL.D. Sc.D. F.R.S.-Three Lectures on THE MODERN MICROSCOPE; AN INSTRUMENT FOR RECREATION AND RESEARCH; on Tuesdays, May 22, 29, June 5. FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN, Esq. President of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers.-Two Lectures on THE ETCHING REVIVAL; on Thursdays, April 5, 12. PROFESSOR J. F. BRIDGE, Mus. Doc. Organist of Westminster Abbey, and Gresham Professor of Music.-Two Lectures on Music: 1. MUSICAL GESTURES; 2. MOZART AS A TEACHER (with Musical Illustrations); on Thursdays, April 19, 26. PROFESSOR DEWAR, M.A. LL.D. F.R.S. M.R.I. Fullerian Professor of Chemistry, R.I.-Three Lectures on THE SOLID AND LIQUID STATES OF MATTER; on Thursdays, May 3, 10, 17. PROFESSOR W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L. Professor of Egyptology in University College, London.-Three Lectures on EGYPTIAN DECORATIVE ART ; on Thursdays, May 24, 31, June 7. JOHN ALFRED GRAY, Esq. M.R.C.S.-Two Lectures on LIFE AMONG THE AFGHANS; on Saturdays, April 7, 14. H. D. TRAILL, Esq. D.C.L.-Two Lectures on Literature and JOURNALISM; on Saturdays, April 21, 28. CAPTAIN ABNEY, C.B. D.C.L. F.R.S. M.R.I.-Three Lectures on COLOUR VISION (THE TYNDALL LECTURES); on Saturdays, May 5, 12, 19. ROBERT W. LOWE, Esq. Author of "Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature," ," "Thomas Betterton," &c.-Three Lectures on THE STAGE AND SOCIETY; on Saturdays, May 26, June 2, 9. The PRESENTS received since the last Meeting were laid on the table, and the thanks of the Members returned for the same, viz.:— FROM The Governor-General of India-Geological Survey of India: Records, Vol. XXVI. Part 4. 8vo. 1893. The British Museum (Natural History)—Catalogue of Birds, Vol. XXII. 8vo. 1893. Accademia dei Lincei, Reale, Roma-Classe di Scienze Fisiche, Matematiche e Naturali. Atti, Serie Quinta: Rendiconti. 1o Semestre, Vol. III. Fasc. 1-3. 8vo. 1894. Classe di Scienze, Morali, etc.: Rendiconti, Serie Quinta, Vol. II. Fasc. 12. 8vo. 1894. Atti, Serie Quarta. Anno CCLXXXVIII.-CCLXXXIX. 4to. 1892-93. American Geographical Society-Bulletin, Vol. XXV. No. 4, Part 1. 8vo. 1893. Asiatic Society of Bengal-Journal, Vol. LXII. Part 1, No. 3; Part 2, No. 3; Part 3, Nos. 1-3. 8vo. 1893. Proceedings, 1893, Nos. 8, 9. 8vo. 8vo. 1894. Asiatic Society of Great Britain, Royal-Journal for January, 1894. 8vo. 8vo. 1894. Boston Public Library-Bulletin for January, 1894. Svo. British Architects, Royal Institute of Journal, 3rd Series, Vol. I. Nos. 8, 9. 4to. British Astronomical Association-Journal, Vol. IV. No. 3. 8vo. 1894. Brymner, Douglas, Esq. (the Archivist)-Report on Canadian Archives, 1893. 8vo. 1894. Camera Club-Journal for January and February, 1894. 8vo. Catalogue of the Library. 8vo. 1893. Chemical Industry, Society of-Journal, Vol. XIII. No. 1. 8vo. 1894. 1894, No. 1. 8vo. Dax, Société de Borda-Bulletin, Dix-Huitième Année (1893), Deuxième et Troisième Trimestre. 8vo. 1893. East India Association-Journal, Vol. XXVI. No. 3. 8vo. 1894. Editors-American Journal of Science for February, 1894. 8vo. Analyst for February, 1894. 8vo. Athenæum for February, 1894. 4to. Brewers' Journal for February, 1894. 8vo. |