Although they could not have designed the plan, or laid out the foundations, they may assist in bringing the edifice to perfection.

The great and successful insurrection against the authority of a defective scientific system, was in the two centuries which succeeded the invention of printing -when the scholastic philosophy, founded chiefly upon the logical and metaphysical writings of Aristotle, and developed under the influence of the Church, was dethroned.* This revolution, although it had been prepared by a long series of minor insurgents, as well as by the positive researches of Galileo and Descartes, was mainly consummated by Bacon; and he may be considered as the type of this great intellectual movement. According to the poetical tribute of Cowley, Bacon was the main author of this triumph of Reason over Authority.

Authority-which did a body boast,

Though 'twas but air condensed, and stalk'd about,
Like some old giant's more gigantic ghost,

To terrify the learned rout―

With the plain magic of true Reason's light,

He chased out of our sight;

Nor suffered living men to be misled

By the vain shadows of the dead:

To graves, from whence it rose, the conquered phantom fled.t

§ 3. When, however, we speak of the triumph of Reason over Authority, accomplished by the establish

* See Whewell's Philosophy of Inductive Sciences, b. XII. c. 7. Compare a passage from the preface to the first vol. of the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences, at Paris, quoted by Dr. Whewell, ib., vol. II. p. 428; also Hallam, Lit. of Europe, vol. II. c. 3. + Cowley's Epistle to the Royal Society. Compare Dryden's verses, in his Epistle to Dr. Charleton

The longest tyranny that ever swayed,
Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed

ment of the Baconian inductive method in the place of the scholastic philosophy, and adopt the received language on this subject, we must be careful not to confound, under the name of submission to authority, two distinct intellectual defects.

A blind spirit of routine in philosophy, and a passive assent to existing dogmas, without verification, or a really independent scrutiny, is not identical with belief on the principle of authority. By Authority, we have in this Essay understood, in conformity with general usage, the influence which determines the belief without a comprehension of the proof.* But the scientific student, who servilely follows a beaten track, does not necessarily accept opinions upon the mere credit of his master, and without understanding the evidence on which they rest. He may, on the contrary, have gone through all the reasonings propounded by his guide-may have perused and reperused all his writings-have commented select portions of them-interpreted the obscure, and illustrated the concise passages-and reproduced his doctrines in compends and epitomes. He may be a slavish follower, but a slave both voluntarily and upon conviction.

Among the assertors of free reason's claim
Our nation's not the least in worth or fame.
The world to Bacon does not only owe
Its present knowledge, but its future too.

Vol. XI. p. 114; ed. Scott.

*Thus, Cicero speaks of his belief being influenced, not merely by the arguments, but by the authority of great philosophers: "Nec solum ratio ac disputatio impulit, ut ita crederem; sed nobilitas etiam summorum philosophorum et auctoritas."-De Senect. c. 21.

BB

Now the revolution in philosophy, which is represented by the name of Bacon, must be considered mainly as a change of scientific method, and the consequent substitution of a set of sound doctrines, of which the proof was understood, for a set of unsound doctrines, of which the proof was equally understood. The Arabian and scholastic philosophy, which had prevailed during the long stationary period after the extinction of Greek civilization, was doubtless founded upon the writings of Aristotle; but the scientific writers of that period did not bow to the authority of Aristotle, without examining, understanding, and reproducing his reasons. They were, as Dr. Whewell has remarked,* distinguished by their commentatorial spirit-they translated the Aristotelian treatises, and illustrated them with elaborate expositions -they reduced the logical, physical, and metaphysical theories of their teacher into a connected system; but their assent was given to the argument, not to the conclusion without the proof. They repeated the Aristotelian philosophy as a system of deductive science, not as a series of axioms. In truth, the schoolmen adopted the physical tenets of Aristotle, as a modern astronomer adopts the Principia of Newton; they studied the system, understood the proofs, and assented to the conclusions.† Men such as Thomas Aquinas cannot be charged with a tame and sluggish acquiescence in conclusions, without

* See his account of physical science during the stationary period of the middle ages, in his Hist. of the Ind. Sci. b. IV.

+ "Almost the whole career of the Greek schools of philosophyof the schoolmen of Europe in the middle ages-of the Arabian and Indian philosophers, shows us that we may have extreme ingenuity and subtlety, invention and connexion, demonstration and method; and yet that out of these germs no physical science may be developed."-WHEWELL, Hist. of Ind. Sci. vol. I. p. 8.

troubling themselves to examine their connexion with the premises. The error of the schoolmen, in fact, consisted in the adoption of a defective scientific method-in the uninquiring acceptance of first principles, false, indistinct, and unverified and in reasoning deductively from propositions, whose truth had not been established by proper preliminary processes. They received the Aristotelic treatises as the sum of a perfect philosophical system, not as the provisional researches of a progressive science. This error is not identical with a servile deference to authority. The schoolman who drew all his lessons from Aristotle the "Maestro di color che sanno," as he was called by Dante-might have believed nothing on the mere authority of the philosopher; unless those first principles, which he doubtless considered as intuitive truths, may be considered as derived from this source. He mastered the philosophical system in vogue, and understood its logical connexion; but it was built upon an unsound basis—and into the sufficiency of this basis, owing to the faultiness of his methods of investigation, he omitted to inquire. A modern student, who has access to the results of a better method, may exhibit equal want of originality of thought, and may merely repeat the deductions of his predecessors without verification or improvement; but if the conclusions are correct, he would not be censured for an undue submission to authority. On the one hand, then, a man who never adopts a speculative opinion without understanding its grounds may, from sectarian prejudice or some other cause, be infected with the intellectual slavishness of the scholastic or Arabian period, and may receive syllogisms as if they were the responses of an oracle. But, on the other hand, a man who is strongly imbued with the progressive principle of science-who verifies all results

by a rigid scrutiny within a certain circle of subjects, may, with respect to other subjects, cherish the principle of authority, convinced that he has not time for all things.

§ 4. Bacon is very explicit and earnest in refuting the fallacy, which confounded a respect for opinions handed down from antiquity, with the respect due to the opinions of the aged.* At a time when a superstitious veneration for traditionary doctrines in philosophy still prevailed, there was a confusion between the age of a man and the age of the world; and it was supposed that, as an old man is more experienced, and therefore more able to judge, than a young man, so a remote generation, as being more ancient, is wiser than the existing one. Bacon exposed this somewhat obvious fallacy by the pithy sentence: "Antiquitas sæculi juventus mundi"-justly remarking, that each generation is older than its predecessor, on the same principle that an aged man is older than a youth; and that the latest generation ought to be the wisest, as being furnished with the most ample stock of experiments and observations. The mistake arose from not perceiving that, in order to compare the age of the world with that

* See Adv. of Learning, vol. II. p. 46; Nov. Org. 1. I. aph. 83. The remark had been previously made by Giordano Bruno. See Whewell's Phil. of Ind. Sei. vol. II. p. 361. Compare Hallam, Lit. of Europe, vol. IV. ch. 9, § 45. Pascal, Pensées, Part I. art. 1.

Lactantius complains that the heathen religions were maintained simply on account of their antiquity: "Hæ sunt religiones, quas sibi a majoribus suis traditas, pertinacissimè tueri ac defendere perseverant: nec considerant quales sint, sed ex hoc probatas atque veras esse confidunt, quod eas veteres tradiderunt: tantaque est auctoritas vetustatis, ut inquirere in eam scelus esse dicatur."Div. Inst. II. p. 144. Compare above, p. 114.