Chapter I

ASCENT FROM PARTICULARS TO THE 'HIGHEST PARTS OF SCIENCES,' BY THE ENIGMATIC METHOD ILLUSTRATED.

Single, _I'll_ resolve you.--_Tempest_.

Observe his inclination in yourself.--_Hamlet_.

For ciphers, they are commonly in letters, but may be in words. _Advancement of Learning_.

The fact that a Science of Practice, not limited to Physics and the Arts based on the knowledge of physical laws, but covering the whole ground of the human activity, and limited only by the want and faculty of man, required, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, some special and profoundly artistic methods of 'delivery and tradition,' would not appear to need much demonstration to one acquainted with the peculiar features of that particular crisis in the history of the English nation.

And certainly any one at all informed in regard to the condition of the world at the time in which this science,--which is the new practical science of the modern ages,--makes its first appearance in history,--any one who knows what kind of a public opinion, what amount of intelligence in the common mind the very fact of the first appearance of such a science on the stage of the human affairs presupposes,--any one who will stop to consider what kind of a public it was to which such a science had need as yet to address itself, when that engine for the diffusion of knowledge, which has been battering the ignorance and stupidity of the masses of men ever since, was as yet a novel invention, when all the learning of the world was still the learning of the cell and the cloister, when the practice of the world was still in all departments, unscientific,--any one at least who will stop to consider the nature of the 'preconceptions' which a science that is none other than the universal science of practice, must needs encounter in its principal and nobler fields, will hardly need to be told that if produced at all under such conditions, it must needs be produced covertly. Who does not know, beforehand, that such a science would have to concede virtually, for a time, the whole ground of its nobler fields to the preoccupations it found on them, as the inevitable condition of its entrance upon the stage of the human affairs in any capacity, as the basis of any toleration of its claim to dictate to the men of practice in any department of their proceedings.

That that little 'courtly company' of Elizabethan scholars, in which this great enterprise for the relief of man's estate was supposed in their own time to have had its origin, was composed of wits and men of learning who were known, in their own time, to have concealed their connection with the works on which their literary fame chiefly depended--that that 'glorious Willy,' who finds these forbidden fields of science all open to his pastime, was secretly claimed by this company--that a style of 'delivery' elaborately enigmatical, borrowed in part from the invention of the ancients, and the more recent use of the middle ages, but largely modified and expressly adapted to this exigency, was employed in the compositions of this school, both in prose and verse, a style capable of conveying not merely a double, but a triple significance; a style so capacious in its concealments, so large in its '_cryptic_,' as to admit without limitation the whole scope of this argument, and so involved as to conceal in its involutions, all that was then forbidden to appear,--this has been proved in that part of the work which contains the historical key to this delivery.

We have also incontestable historical evidence of the fact, that the man who was at the head of this new conjunction in speculation and practice in its more immediate historical developments,--the scholar who was most openly concerned in his own time in the introduction of those great changes in the condition of the world, which date their beginning from this time, was himself primarily concerned in the invention of this art. That this great political chief, this founder of new polities and inventor of new social arts, who was at the same time the founder of a new school in philosophy, was understood in his own time to have found occasion for the use of such an art, in his oral as well as in his written communications with his school;--that he was connected with a scientific association, which was known to have concealed under the profession of a curious antiquarian research, an inquiry into the higher parts of sciences which the government of that time was not disposed to countenance;--that in the opinion of persons who had the best opportunity of becoming acquainted with the facts at the time, this inventor of the art was himself beheaded, chiefly on account of the discovery of his use of it in one of his gravest literary works;--all this has been produced already, as matter of historic record merely. All this remains in the form of detailed contemporary statement, which suffices to convey, if not the fact that the forbidden parts of sciences were freely handled in the discussions of this school, and not in their secret oral discussions only, but in their great published works,--if not that, at least the fact that such was the impression and belief of persons living at the time, whether any ground existed for it or not.

But the arts by which these new men of science contrived to evade the ignorance and the despotic limitations of their time, the inventions with which they worked to such good purpose upon their own time, in spite of its restrictions and oppositions, and which enable them to 'outstretch their span,' and prolong and perpetuate their plan for the advancement of their kind, and compel the future ages to work with them to the fulfilment of its ends;--the arts by which these great original naturalists undertook to transfer in all their unimpaired splendour and worth, the collections they had made in the nobler fields of their science to the ages that would be able to make use of them;--these are the arts that we shall have need to master, if we would unlock the legacy they have left to us.

The proof of the existence of this special art of delivery and tradition, and the definition of the objects for which it was employed, has been derived thus far chiefly from sources of evidence exterior to the works themselves; but the inventors of it and those who made use of it in their own speech and writings, are undoubtedly the persons best qualified to give us authentic and lively information on this subject; and we are now happily in a position to appreciate the statements which they have been at such pains to leave us, for the sake of clearing up those parts of their discourse which were necessarily obscured at the time. Now that we have in our hands that key of _Times_ which they have recommended to our use, that knowledge of times which 'gives great light in many cases to true interpretations,' it is not possible any longer to overlook these passages, or to mistake their purport.

But before we enter upon the doctrine of Art which was published in the first great recognized work of this philosophy, it will be necessary to produce here some extracts from a book which was not originally published in England, or in the English language, but one which was brought out here as an exotic, though it is in fact one of the great original works of this school, and one of its boldest and most successful issues; a work in which the new grounds of the actual experience and life of men, are not merely inclosed and propounded for written inquiry, but openly occupied. This is not the place to explain this fact, though the continental relations of this school, and other circumstances already referred to in the life of its founder, will serve to throw some light upon it; but on account of the bolder assertions which the particular form of writing and publication rendered possible in this case, and for the sake also of the more lively exhibition of the art itself which accompanies and illustrates these assertions in this instance, it appears on the whole excusable to commence our study of the special Art for the delivery and tradition of knowledge in those departments which science was then forbidden on pain of death to enter, with that exhibition of it which is contained in this particular work, trusting to the progress of the extracts themselves to apologize to the intelligent reader for any thing which may seem to require explanation in this selection.

It is only necessary to premise, that this work is one of the many works of this school, in which a grave, profoundly scientific design is concealed under the disguise of a gay, popular, attractive form of writing, though in this case the audience is from the first to a certain extent select. It has no platform that takes in--as the plays do, with their more glaring attractions and their lower and broader range of inculcation,--the populace. There is no pit in this theatre. It is throughout a book for men of liberal culture; but it is a book for the world, and for men of the world, and not for the cloister merely, and the scholar. But this, too, has its differing grades of readers, from its outer court of lively pastime and brilliant aimless chat to that _esoteric_ chamber, where the abstrusest parts of sciences are waiting for those who will accept the clues, and patiently ascend to them.

The work is popular in its form, but it is inwoven throughout with a thread of lurking meanings so near the surface, and at times so boldly obtruded, that it is difficult to understand how it could ever have been read at all without occasioning the inquiry which it was intended to occasion under certain conditions, but which it was necessary for this society to ward off from their works, except under these limitations, at the time when they were issued. For these inner meanings are everywhere pointed and emphasized with the most bold and vivid illustration, which lies on the surface of the work, in the form of stories, often without any apparent relevance in that exterior connection--brought in, as it would seem, in mere caprice or by the loosest threads of association. They lie, with the 'allegations' which accompany them, strewn all over the surface of the work, like 'trap' on 'sand-stone,' telling their story to the scientific eye, and beckoning the philosophic explorer to that primeval granite of sciences that their vein will surely lead to. But the careless observer, bent on recreation, observes only a pleasing feature in the landscape, one that breaks happily its threatened dulness; the reader, reading this book as _books_ are wont to be read, finds nothing in this phenomenon to excite his curiosity. And the author knows him and his ways so well, that he is able to foresee that result, and is not afraid to trust to it in the case of those whose scrutiny he is careful to avoid. For he is one who counts largely on the carelessness, or the indifference, or the stupidity of those whom he addresses. There is no end to his confidence in that. He is perpetually staking his life on it. Neither is he willing to trust to the clues which these unexplained stories might seem of themselves to offer to the studious eye, to engage the attention of the reader--the reader whose attention he is bent on securing. Availing himself of one of those nooks of discourse, which he is at no loss for the means of creating when the purpose of his _essaie_ requires it, he beckons the confidential reader aside, and thus explains his method to him, outright, in terms which admit of but one construction. 'Neither these stories,' he says, 'nor my allegations do always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; I do not only regard them for the use I make of them; they carry sometimes, _besides what I apply them to_, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes, _collaterally, a more delicate sound_, both to me myself,--who will say no more about it _in this place_' [we shall hear more of it in another place, however, and where the delicate collateral sounds will not be wanting]--'both to me myself, and _to others who happen to be of my ear_.'

To the reader, who does indeed happen to be of his ear, to one who has read the 'allegations' and stories that he speaks of, and the whole work, and the works connected with it, by means of that knowledge of the inner intention, and of the method to which he alludes, this passage would of course convey no new intelligence. But will the reader, to whom the views here presented are yet too new to seem credible, endeavour to imagine or invent for himself any form of words, in which the claim already made in regard to the style in which the great original writers of this age and the founders of the new science of the human life were compelled to infold their doctrine, could have been, in the case of this one at least, more distinctly asserted. Here is proof that one of them, one who counted on an _audience_ too, did find himself compelled to infold his richer and bolder meanings in the manner described. All that need be claimed at present in regard to the authorship of this sentence is, that it is written by one whose writings, in their higher intention, have ceased to be understood, for lack of the '_ear_' to which his bolder and richer meanings are addressed, for lack of the _ear_, to which the collateral and more delicate sounds which his words sometimes carry with them are perceptible; and that it is written by a philosopher whose learning and aims and opinions, down to the slightest points of detail, are absolutely identical with those of the principal writers of this school.

But let us look at a few of the stories which he ventures to introduce so emphatically, selecting only such as can be told in a sentence or two. Let us take the next one that follows this explanation--the story in the very next paragraph to it. The question is _apparently_ of Cicero, of his style, of his vanity, of his supposed care for his _fame_ in future ages, of his _real disposition and objects_.

'Away with that eloquence that so enchants us with its _harmony_, that we should more study it than _things_' [what new soul of philosophy is this, then, already?]--'unless you will affirm that of _Cicero_ to be of so supreme perfection as to form _a body_ of itself. And of him, I shall further add one story we read of to this purpose, wherein _his nature_ will _much more manifestly be laid open to us_' [than in that seeming care for his fame in future ages, or in that lower object of style, just dismissed so scornfully].

'He was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little straitened _in time_, to _fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do_, when _Eros_, one of his slaves, brought him word that the _audience was deferred_ till the next day, at which he was so ravished with joy that _he enfranchised him_.'

The word 'time'--here admits of a double rendering whereby the _author's_ aims are more manifestly laid open; and there is also another word in this sentence which carries a 'delicate sound' with it, to those who have met this author in other fields, and who happen to be of his counsel. But lest the stories of themselves should still seem flat and pointless, or trivial and insignificant to the uninstructed ear, it may be necessary to interweave them with some further 'allegations on this subject,' which the author assumes, or appears to assume, in his own person.

'I write my book for _few men_, and for _few years_. Had it been _matter of duration_, I should have put it into a _better language_. According to the continual variation that ours has been subject to hitherto [and we know who had a similar view on this point], who can expect that the present _form of language_ should be in use fifty years hence. It slips every day through our fingers; and since I was born, is altered above one half. We say that it is now perfect: _every age says the same of the language it speaks_. I shall hardly trust to that so long as it runs away and _changes_ as it does.

''Tis for good and useful writings to nail and rivet it to them, and its reputation will go _according to the fortune of our state. For which reason, I am not afraid to insert herein several private articles, which will spend their use amongst the men now living_, AND THAT CONCERN THE PARTICULAR KNOWLEDGE OF SOME WHO WILL SEE FURTHER INTO THEM THAN THE COMMON READER.' But that the inner reading of these private articles--that reading which lay farther in--to which he invites the attention of those whom it concerns--was not expected to spend its use among the men then living, that which follows might seem to imply. It was that wrapping of them, it was that gross superscription which 'the fortune of our state was likely to make obsolete ere long,' this author thought, as we shall see if we look into his prophecies a little. 'I will not, after all, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of _me_: "He _judged_, and LIVED SO and SO. Could he have spoken when he was dying, he would have said _so_ or _so_. I knew him better than any."

'So _our_ virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times,'

'says the unfortunate Tullus Aufidius, in the act of conducting a Volscian army against the infant Roman state, bemoaning himself upon the conditions of his historic whereabouts, and beseeching the sympathy and favourable constructions of posterity--

So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the times;
And power unto itself most commendable
Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair
To extol what it hath done.

'The times,' says Lord Bacon, speaking in reference to books particularly, though _he_ also recommends the same key for the reading of lives, 'the times in many cases give _great light_ to true interpretations.'

'Now as much as decency permits,' continues the other, anticipating _here_ that speech which he might be supposed to have been anxious to make in defence of his posthumous reputation, could he have spoken when he was dying, and forestalling that criticism which he foresaw--that odious criticism of posterity on the discrepancy between _his life_ and _his judgment_--'Now as much as decency permits, I _here_ discover my inclinations and affections. _If any observe_, he will find that _I have either told or designed to tell_ ALL. _What I cannot express I point out with my finger_.

'There was never greater circumspection and _military prudence_ than sometimes is seen among US; can it be that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, _that they reserve themselves to the end of the game_?'

'There needs no more but to see a man promoted to dignity, though we knew him but three days before a man of no mark, yet an image of grandeur and ability insensibly steals into our opinion, and we persuade ourselves that growing in reputation and attendants, he is also increased in merit':--

_Hamlet_. Do the boys carry it away?

_Ros_. Ay, that they do, my lord. Hercules and his load too.

_Hamlet_. It is not very strange; for my uncle is king of Denmark,
and those that would make mouths at him while my father lived, give
twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in
little. 'Sblood, there is something _in this, more_ than
_natural_ [talking of the _super_natural], _if philosophy could
find it out_.

'But,' our prose philosopher, whose mind is running much on the same subjects, continues 'if it happens so that he [this favourite of fortune] falls again, and is mixed with the common crowd, every one inquires with wonder into the _cause_ of his having been hoisted so high. _Is it he_? say they: did he know no more than this _when he was in_ PLACE?' ['change _places_ ... robes and furred gowns hide all.'] Do _princes_ satisfy _themselves_ with so little? _Truly we were in good hands_! That which I myself adore in kings, is [note it] _the crowd of the adorers_. All reverence and submission is due to them, _except that of the understanding_; my _reason_ is not to bow and bend, 'tis my _knees_' 'I will not do't' says another, who is in this one's counsels,

I will not do't
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,
And by my body's action, teach my mind
A most inherent baseness. _Coriolanus_.

'Antisthenes one day entreated _the Athenians to give orders that their asses might be employed in tilling the ground_,--to which it was answered, "that _those animals were not destined to such a service_." "That's all one," replied he; "it only sticks at your command; for the most ignorant and incapable men you employ _in your commands of war_, immediately become worthy enough _because_--YOU EMPLOY THEM."'

There mightst thou behold the great image of authority. A dog's obeyed in office.--Lear.

For thou dost know, oh Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here,
A very--very--_Peacock_.
Horatio. You might have rhymed. Hamlet.

'to which,' continues this political philosopher,--that is, to which preceding anecdote--containing such unflattering intimations with regard to the obstinacy of nature, in the limits she has set to the practical abilities of those _animals_, not enlarging their natural gifts out of respect to the Athenian selection (an anecdote which supplies a rhyme to Hamlet's verse, and to many others from the same source)--'_to which the custom of so many people_, who canonize the KINGS they have chosen _out of their own body_, and are not content only to honour, but adore them, _comes very near. Those of Mexico_ [for instance, it would not of course do to take any nearer home], after the ceremonies of _their_ king's coronation are finished, _dare no more look him in the face_; but, as if they _deified_ him by his royalty, _among_ the oaths they make him take to _maintain their religion and laws_, to be valiant, just and mild; he moreover swears,--_to make the sun run his course in his wonted light,--to drain the clouds at a fit season,--to confine rivers within their channels,--and to cause all things necessary for his people to be borne by the earth_.' '(They told me I was everything. But when the rain came to wet me once, when the wind would not peace at my bidding,' says Lear, 'there I found them, there I smelt them out.)' This, in connection with the preceding anecdote, to which, in the opinion of this author, it comes properly so very near, may be classed of itself among the suggestive stories above referred to; but the bearing of these quotations upon the particular question of style, which must determine the selection here, is set forth in that which follows.

It should be stated, however, that in a preceding paragraph, the author has just very pointedly expressed it as his opinion, that men who are supposed, by common consent, to be so far above the rest of mankind in their single virtue and judgment, that they are permitted to govern them at their discretion, should by no means undertake to maintain that view, by exhibiting that supposed kingly and divine faculty in the way of _speech_ or _argument_; thus putting themselves on a level with their subjects, and by meeting them on their own ground, with their own weapons, giving occasion for comparisons, perhaps not altogether favourable to that theory of a superlative and divine difference which the doctrine of a divine right to rule naturally presupposes. 'For,' he says, 'neither is it enough for those _who govern and command us, and have all the world in their hand_, to have a common understanding, and to be able to do what the rest can' [their faculty of judgment must match their position, for if it be only a common one, the difference will make it despised]: 'they are very much below us, if they be not _infinitely above us_. And, therefore, _silence_ is to them not only a countenance of respect and gravity, but very often of good profit and policy too; for, Megabysus going to see _Apelles_ in his _painting_ room, stood a great while without speaking a word, and at last began to talk of his paintings, for which he received this rude reproof. '_Whilst thou wast silent_, thou seemedst to be something great, by reason of thy chains and pomp; _but now that we have heard thee speak_, there is not the meanest boy in my shop that does not despise thee.' But after the author's subsequent reference to 'those animals' that were to be made competent by a vote of the Athenian people for the work of their superiors, to which he adds the custom of people who canonize the kings they have chosen out of their own body, which comes so near, he goes on thus:--_I differ from this common fashion_, and am more apt to suspect capacity when I see it accompanied with grandeur of fortune and _public applause_. We are to consider of what advantage it is, _to speak when one pleases, to choose the subject one will speak of_--[an advantage not common with authors then]--TO INTERRUPT OR CHANGE OTHER MEN'S ARGUMENTS, WITH A MAGISTERIAL AUTHORITY, to protect oneself from the opposition of others, by a nod, a smile, or silence, in the presence of an assembly that trembles with reverence and respect. _A man of a prodigious fortune_, coming to give his judgment upon some slight dispute that was foolishly set on foot at his _table_, began in these words:--'It can only be a liar or a fool that will say otherwise than so and so.' '_Pursue this philosophical point with a dagger in your hand_.'

Here is an author who does contrive to pursue his philosophical points, however, dagger or no dagger, wherever they take him. By putting himself into the trick of singularity, and affecting to be a mere compound of eccentricities and oddities, neither knowing nor caring what it is that he is writing about, and dashing at haphazard into anything as the fit takes him,--'Let us e'en fly at anything,' says Hamlet,--by assuming, in short, the disguise of the elder Brutus; and, on account of a similar necessity, there is no saying what he cannot be allowed to utter with impunity. Under such a cover it is, that he inserts the passages already quoted, which have lain to this hour without attracting the attention of critics, unpractised happily, and unlearned also, in the subtleties which tyrannies--such tyrannies--at least generate; and under this cover it is, that he can venture now on those astounding political disquisitions, which he connects with the complaint of the restrictions and embarrassments which the presence of a man of prodigious fortune at the table occasions, when an argument, trivial or otherwise, happens to be going on there. Under this cover, he can venture to bring in here, in this very connection, and to the very table, even of this man of prodigious fortune, pages of the freest political discussion, containing already the finest analysis of the existing political 'situation,' so full of dark and lurid portent, to the eye of the scientific statesman, to whom, even then, already under the most intolerable restrictions of despotism, of the two extremes of social evil, that which appeared to be the most terrible, and the most to be guarded against, in the inevitable political changes then at hand, was--not the consolidation but the dissolution of the state.

For already the horizon of that political oversight included, not the eventualities of the English Revolutions only, but the darker contingencies of those later political and social convulsions, from whose soundless whirlpools, men spring with joy to the hardest sharpest ledge of tyranny; or hail with joy and national thanksgiving the straw that offers to land them on it. Already the scientific statesman of the Elizabethan age could say, casting an eye over Christendom as it stood then, 'That which most threatens us is, not an _alteration_ in the entire and solid mass, but its _dissipation_ and _divulsion_.'

It is after pages of the freest philosophical discussion, that he arrives at this conclusion--discussion, in which the historical elements and powers are for the first time scientifically recognized and treated throughout with the hand of the new master. For this is a philosopher, who is able to receive into his philosophy the fact, that out of the most depraved and vicious social materials, by the inevitable operation of the universal natural laws, there will, perhaps, result a social adhesion and predominance of powers--a social 'whole,' more capable of maintaining itself than any that Plato or Aristotle, from the heights of their abstractions, could have invented for them. He ridicules, indeed, those ideal politics of antiquity as totally unfit for practical realisation, and admits that though the question as to that which is absolutely the best form of government might be of some value _in a new world_, the basis of all alterations in existing governments should be the fact, that we take a world already formed to certain customs, and do not beget it, as Pyrrha or Cadmus did theirs, and by what means soever we may have the privilege to rebuild and reform it anew, we can hardly _writhe it_ from its wonted bent, but we shall _break all_. For the subtlest principles of the philosophy of things are introduced into this discussion, and the boldest applications of the Shakspere muse are repeated in it.

'That is the way to _lay all flat_,' cries the philosophic poet in the Roman play, opposing on the part of the Conservatist, the violence of an oppressed people, struggling for new forms of government, and bringing out fully, along with their claims, the anti-revolutionary side of the question. 'That which tempts me out on these journeys,' continues this foreign philosopher, speaking in his usual ambiguous terms of his rambling excursive habits and eccentricities of proceedings, glancing also, perhaps, at his outlandish tastes--'that which tempts me out on these journeys, is _unsuitableness to the present manners of_ OUR STATE. _I_ could easily console myself with this corruption in reference to the _public interest_, but not to _my own: I_ am _in particular_ too much oppressed:--for, _in my neighbourhood_ we are of late by _the long libertinage of our civil wars grown old_ in so _riotous a form of state_, that in earnest _'tis a wonder how it can subsist_. In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and held together _at what price soever; in what condition soever they are placed they will close and stick together_ [see the doctrine of things and their original powers in the "Novum Organum"]--_moving and heaping up themselves, as uneven bodies, that shuffled together without order, find of themselves means to unite and settle_. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them altogether in a city which he had built for that purpose, which bore their name; I believe that they, even from vices, erected a government among them, and a commodious and just society.'

'Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation'; and let the reader note here, how the principle which has predominated historically in the English Revolution, the principle which the fine Frankish, half Gallic genius, with all its fire and artistic faculty, could not strike instinctively or empirically, in its political experiments--it is well to note, how this distinctive element of the _English_ Revolution--that revolution which is still in progress, with its remedial vitalities--already speaks beforehand, from the lips of this foreign Elizabethan Revolutionist. 'Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation; change only gives form to injustice and tyranny. WHEN ANY PIECE IS OUT OF ORDER IT MAY BE PROPPED, one may prevent and take care that the _decay and corruption_ NATURAL TO ALL THINGS, do not carry us too far from _our beginnings and principles_; but to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change the foundations of so vast a building, is for them to do who to _make clean, efface_, who would reform particular defects by a universal confusion, and cure diseases by _death_.' Surely, one may read in good Elizabethan English passages which savor somewhat of this policy. One would say that the principle was in fact identical, as, for instance, in this case. 'Sir Francis Bacon (who was always for moderate counsels), when one was speaking of such a reformation of the Church of England, as would in effect make it _no church_, said thus to him:--'Sir, the subject we talk of is the _eye_ of England, and if there be a speck or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; but he were a strange oculist who would pull out the eye.' [And here is another writer who seems to be taking, on this point and others, very much the same view of the constitution and vitality of states, about these times:--

He's a disease that must be cut away.
Oh, he's a limb that has but a disease;
Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy.]

But our Gascon philosopher goes on thus, with his Gascon inspirations: and these sportive notions, struck off at a heat, these careless intuitions, these fine new practical axioms of scientific politics, appear to be every whit as good as if they had been sifted through the scientific tables of the Novum Organum. They are, in fact, the identical truth which the last vintage of the Novum Organum yields on this point. 'The world is unapt for curing itself; _it is so impatient of any thing that presses it_, that it thinks of nothing but _disengaging itself_, at what price soever. We see, by a thousand examples, that it generally cures itself to its cost. The _discharge of a present evil is no cure, if a general amendment of condition does not follow_; the surgeon's end is _not only to cut away the dead flesh_,--that is but the progress of his cure;--he has a care over and above, _to fill up the wound with better and more natural flesh_, and _to restore the member to its due state_. Whoever only proposes to himself to remove that which offends _him_, falls short; _for good_ does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, _and a worse, as it happened in Caesar's killers_, who brought the republic to _such a pass, that they had reason to repent their meddling with it_.' 'I fear there will _a worse_ one come in his place,' says a fellow in Shakespear's crowd, at the first Caesar's funeral; and that his speech made the moral of the piece, we shall see in the course of this study.

But though the frantic absolutisms and irregularities of that 'old riotous form of military government,' which the long civil wars had generated, seemed of themselves to threaten speedy dissolution, this old Gascon prophet, with his inexhaustible fund of English shrewdness, and sound English sense, underlying all his Gasconading, by no means considers the state as past the statesman's care: 'after all, _we are not, perhaps, at the last gasp_,' he says. 'The conservation of states _is a thing that in all likelihood surpasses our understanding_: a civil government is, as Plato says, "a mighty and powerful thing, and hard to be dissolved." "States, as great engines, move slowly," says Lord Bacon; "and are not so soon put out of frame";--that is, so soon as "the resolution of particular persons," which is his reason for producing his moral philosophy, or rather his moral _science_, as _his_ engine for attack upon the state, a science which concerns the government of every man over himself; "for, as in Egypt, the seven good years sustained the seven bad; so governments, for a time well-grounded, do bear out errors following."' But this is the way that this Gascon philosopher records _his_ conclusions on the same subject. 'Every thing that totters does not fall. The contexture of so great a body holds by more nails than one. _It holds even by its antiquity_, like old buildings from which the foundations are worn away by time, without rough cast or cement, which yet live or support themselves by their own weight. Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work to reconnoitre only the flank and the fosse, to judge of the security of a place; it must be examined _which way approaches_ can be made to it, AND IN WHAT CONDITION THE ASSAILANT IS--that is the question. '_Few vessels sink with their own weight_, and without some exterior violence. Let us every way cast our eyes. Every thing about us totters. In all the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to us, if you will but look, you will there see evident threats of alteration and ruin. Astrologers need not go to heaven to foretell, as they do, GREAT REVOLUTIONS' [this is the speech of the Elizabethan age--'great revolutions'] 'and _imminent mutations_.' [This is the new kind of learning and prophecy; there was but one source of it open then, that could yield axioms of this kind; for this is the kind that Lord Bacon tells us the head-spring of sciences must be visited for.] 'But _conformity is a quality antagonist to_ DISSOLUTION. For my part, I despair not, and _fancy I perceive ways to save us_.'

And _surely_ this is one of the inserted private articles, before mentioned, which may, or may not be, 'designed to spend their use among the men now living'; but 'which concern the particular knowledge of some who will see further into them than the common reader.' If there had been a 'London Times' going then, and this old outlandish Gascon Antic had been an English statesman preparing this article as a leader for it, the question of the Times could hardly have been more roundly dealt with, or with a clearer northern accent.

But it is high time for him to bethink himself, and 'draw his old cloak about him'; for, after all, this so just and profound a view of so grave a subject, proceeds from one who has no aims, no plan, no learning, no memory;--a vain, fantastic egotist, who writes only because he will be talking, and talking of himself above all; who is not ashamed to attribute to himself all sorts of mad inconsistent humours, and to contradict himself on every page, if thereby he can only win your eye, or startle your curiosity, and induce you to follow him. After so long and grave a discussion, suddenly it occurs to him that it is time for a little miscellaneous confidential chat about himself, and those certain oddities of his which he does not wish you to lose sight of altogether; and it is time, too, for another of those _stories_, which serve to divert the attention when it threatens to become too fixed, and break up and enliven the dull passages, besides having that other purpose which he speaks of so frankly. And although this whole discussion is not without a direct bearing upon that particular topic, with which it is here connected, inasmuch as the political situation, which is so clearly exhibited, is precisely that of the Elizabethan scholar, it is chiefly this little piece of confidential chat with which it closes, and _its significance in that connection_, which gives the rest its insertion here.

For suddenly he recollects himself, and stops short to express the fear that he may have written _something similar to this elsewhere_; and he gives you to understand--not all at once--but by a series of strokes, that too bold a repetition _here_, of what he has said _elsewhere_ might be attended, to him, with serious consequences; and he begs you to note, as he does in twenty other passages and stories here and elsewhere, that his _style_ is all hampered with considerations such as these--that instead of merely thinking of making a good book, and presenting his subjects in their clearest and most effective form for the reader;--a thing in itself sufficiently laborious, as other authors find to their cost, he is all the time compelled to weigh his words with reference to such points as this. He must be perpetually on his guard that the identity of that which he presents here, and that which he presents elsewhere, under other and very different forms (in much graver forms perhaps, and perhaps in others not so grave), shall no where become so glaring as to attract popular attention, while he is willing and anxious to keep that identity or connection constantly present to the apprehension of the few, for whom he tells us his book--that is, this book within the book--is written.

'I fear in these _reveries_ of mine,' he continues, suspending at last suddenly this bold and continuous application to the immediate political emergency of those philosophical principles which he has exhibited in the abstract, in their _common_ and _universal form_, elsewhere; 'I fear, in these reveries of the _treachery of my memory_, lest by inadvertence it should make me write the same thing twice. Now I here set down _nothing new_, these are _common_ thoughts, and having per-adventure conceived them a hundred times, _I am afraid_ I _have set them down somewhere else already_. Repetition is everywhere troublesome, though it were in Homer, _but 'tis ruinous in things that have only a superficial and transitory_ SHOW. I do not love inculcation, even in the most profitable things, as in Seneca, and the practice of his Stoical school displeases me of _repeating upon every subject and at length_, THE PRINCIPLES and PRESUPPOSITIONS THAT SERVE IN GENERAL, and _always_ to re-allege anew;' that is, under the particular divisions of the subject, _common and universal reasons_. 'What I cannot express I point out with my finger,' he tells you elsewhere, but it is thus that he continues here.

'My memory grows worse and worse every day. I must _fain for the time to come_ (collateral sounds), for _hitherto, thank God, nothing has happened much amiss_, to avoid all preparation, for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must be forced to insist. To _be tied and bound to a thing_ puts _me_ quite out, and especially where I have to depend upon so weak an instrument as my memory. I never could read this story without being offended at it, with as it were _a personal_ and natural resentment.' The reader will note that the question here is of _style_, or method, and of this author's style in particular, and of his special embarrassments.

'Lyncestes _accused of conspiracy against Alexander_, the day that he was brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard in his defence, had prepared a _studied speech_, of which, _haggling and stammering_, he pronounced _some words_. As he was becoming more perplexed and struggling with his memory, and _trying to recollect himself_, the soldiers that stood _nearest_ killed him with their spears, looking upon his confusion and silence as a confession of his guilt: very fine, indeed! The place, the spectators, the expectation, would astound a man _even though were there no object in his mind but to speak well_; but WHAT _when 'tis an harangue upon which his life depends_?' You that happen to be of my ear, it is my style that we are speaking of, and there is my story.

'_For my part the very being tied to what I am to say, is enough to loose me from it_'--that is the cause of his wandering--'_The more I trust to my memory_, the more do I put myself out of my own power, so _much as to find it in my own countenance_, and have _sometimes been very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I was bound_, whereas _my design is_ to manifest in speaking a _perfect nonchalance_, both of face and accent, and _casual and unpremeditated motions_, as rising from present occasions, _choosing rather to say nothing to purpose, than to show that_ I came _prepared to speak well_; a thing especially unbecoming _a man of my profession_. The preparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will satisfy; a man very often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no further _than he would have done in his gown_.' [Perhaps the reflecting scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this magnificent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended with similarly lame conclusions; but, if he does not, the story which follows may tend to refresh his memory on this point.] 'It is recorded of the orator Curio, that _when he proposed the division of his oration_ into three or four parts, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one or two more.' A much more illustrious speaker, who spoke under circumstances not very unlike those in which the poor conspirator above noted made his haggling and fatal attempts at oratory, is known to have been guilty of a similar oversight; for, having invented a plan of universal science, designed for the relief of the human estate, he forgot the principal application of it. But this author says, _I_ have always avoided falling into this inconvenience, having always hated these promises and announcements, not only out of distrust of my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of the _artificial_. You will find no scientific plan _here_ ostentatiously exhibited; you will find such a plan elsewhere with all the works set down in it, but the works themselves will be missing; and you will find the works elsewhere, but it will be under the cover of a superficial and transitory show, where it would be ruinous to produce the plan, '_I_ have always _avoided_ falling into this inconvenience. _Simpliciora militares decent_.' But as he appears, after all, to have had no military weapon with which to sustain that straight-forwardness of speech which is becoming in a military power, and no dagger to pursue his points with, some artifice, though he professes not to like it, may be necessary, and the rule which he here specifies is, on the whole, perhaps, not altogether amiss. ''Tis enough that I have promised to myself never to take upon me to speak in a place where I owe respect; for as to that sort of speaking where a man _reads_ his speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to those who _naturally could give it a grace by action_, and to rely upon the mercy of the readiness of my invention, I will much less do it; 'tis heavy and perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important necessities.'

'Speaking,' he says in another place, 'hurts and discomposes me,--my _voice_ is loud and high, so that when I have gone to whisper some great person about an affair of _consequence, they have often had to moderate my voice. This story deserves a place here_.

'Some one in a certain Greek school was speaking loud as _I do_. The master of the ceremonies sent to him to speak _lower_. "Tell him then, he must send me," replied the other, "the tone he would have me speak in." To which the other replied, "that he should take the tone from the ear of him to whom he spake." It was well said, if it be understood. Speak _according to the affair_ you are speaking about to the auditor,--(speak according to the business you have in hand, to the purpose you have to accomplish)--for if it mean, it is sufficient that he _hears_ you, I do not find it reason.' It is a more artistic use of speech that he is proposing in his new science of it, for as Lord Bacon has it, who writes as we shall see on this same subject, 'the _proofs_ and _persuasions_ of _rhetoric_ ought to differ according to the auditors,' and the Arts of Rhetoric have for their legitimate end, 'not merely PROOF, but _much more_, IMPRESSION.' 'For many forms are _equal in signification_ which are _differing in impression_, as the difference is great in the piercing of that which is _sharp_, and that which is _flat_, though the _strength_ of the percussion be the same; for instance, there is no man but will be a little more raised, by hearing it said, "Your enemies will be glad of this," than by hearing it said only, "This is evil for you."' But it is thus that our Gascon proceeds, whose comment on his Greek story we have interrupted. 'There is a voice to _flatter_, there is a voice to _instruct_, and a voice to _reprehend_. _I_ would not only have my voice to reach my hearer, but peradventure _that it strike_ and _pierce_ him. When I rate my footman in a sharp and bitter tone, it would be very fine for him to say, "Pray master, speak lower, for I hear you very well." _Speaking_ is _half his that speaks_, and _half his that hears_; the last ought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its motion, as with tennis players; he that receives the ball, shifts, draws back, and prepares himself to receive it, according as he sees him move, who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke itself.' It is not, therefore, because this author has failed to furnish the rules of interpretation necessary for penetrating to the ultimate intention of this new kind of speaking, if all this affectation of simplicity, and all these absurd contradictory statements of his, have been suffered hitherto to pass unchallenged. It is the public mind he has to deal with. 'That which he adores in kings is the _throng_ of _their adorers_.' If he should take the public at once into his confidence, and tell them beforehand precisely what his own opinions were of things in general, if he should set before them in the outset the conclusions to which he proposed to drive them, he might indeed stand some chance to have his arguments interrupted, or changed with a magisterial authority; he would indeed find it necessary to pursue his philosophical points with a dagger in his hand.

And besides, this dogmatical mode of teaching does not appear to him to secure the ends of teaching. He wishes to rouse the human mind to activity, to compel it to think for itself, and put it on the inevitable road to his conclusions. He wishes the reader to strike out those conclusions for himself, and fancy himself the discoverer if he will. So far from being simple and straightforward, his style is in the profoundest degree artistic, for the soul of all our modern art inspired it. He thinks it does no good for scholars to call out to the active world from the platform of their last conclusions. The truths which men receive from those didactic heights remain foreign to them. 'We want medicines to arouse the sense,' says Lord Bacon, who proposed exactly the method of teaching which this philosopher had, as it would seem, already adopted. 'I bring a trumpet to awake his _ear_, to set his _sense_ on the attentive bent, and _then_ to speak,' says that poet who best put this art in practice.

But here it is the prose philosopher who would meet this dull, stupid, custom-bound public on its own ground. He would assume all its absurdities and contradictions in his own person, and permit men to despise, and marvel, and laugh at them in him without displeasure. For whoever will notice carefully, will perceive that the use of the personal pronoun here, is not the limited one of our ordinary speech. Such an one will find that this philosophical _I_ is very broad; that it covers too much to be taken in its literal acceptation. Under this term, the term by which each man names _himself_, the common term of the individual humanity, he finds it convenient to say many things. 'They that will fight _custom_ with _grammar_,' he says, 'are fools. When another tells me, or when I say to myself, _This_ is a word of Gascon growth; _this_ a dangerous phrase; _this_ is an ignorant discourse; thou art too full of figures; _this_ is a paradoxical saying; _this_ is a foolish expression: _thou makest thyself merry sometimes, and men will think_ thou sayest a thing in good earnest, which thou only speakest in jest. Yes, say I; but I correct the faults of _inadvertence, not those of custom_. I have done what I designed,' he says, in triumph, '_All the world knows_ ME in my book, _and my book in_ ME.'

And thus, by describing human nature under that term, or by repeating and stating the common opinions as his own, he is enabled to create an opposition which could not exist, so long as they remain unconsciously operative, or infolded in the separate individuality, as a part of its own particular form.

'My errors are sometimes natural and incorrigible,' he says; 'but the good which virtuous men do to the public in making themselves imitated, _I, perhaps, may do in making my manners avoided_. While I publish and accuse my own imperfections, somebody will learn to be afraid of them. _The parts that I most esteem in myself_, are more honoured in decrying than in commending _my own manners_. Pausanias tells us of an ancient player upon the lyre, who used to make his scholars go to hear one that lived over against him, and played very ill, that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. _The present time_ is fitting to reform us _backward_, more by _dissenting_ than _agreeing_; by differing than consenting.' That is his application of his previous confession. And it is this _present time_ that he impersonates, holding the mirror up to nature, and provoking opposition and criticism for that which was before buried in the unconsciousness of a common absurdity, or a common wrong. 'Profiting little by good examples, I endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as good as I see others evil.'

'There is no fancy so frivolous and extravagant that does not seem to me a suitable product of the human mind. All such whimsies as are in use amongst us, deserve at least to be hearkened to; for my part, they only with me import _inanity_, but they import _that_. Moreover, _vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature_.

'If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard upon me, right and left, his imagination raises up mine. The contradictions of judgments do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friends. "Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou art talking about." When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger. I advance towards him that contradicts, as to one that instructs me. _I embrace and caress truth, in what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself, and extend to it my conquered arms_; and take a pleasure in being reproved, and _accommodate myself to my accusers_ [aside] (very often more by reason of _civility_ than amendment); loving to gratify the liberty of admonition, by my facility of submitting to it, at my own expense. Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it. They have not the courage _to correct_, because they have not the courage _to be corrected, and speak always with dissimulation in the presence of one another_. I take so great pleasure in being judged and known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of THE TWO FORMS I am so. My imagination does so often contradict and condemn itself, that _it is all one to me if another do it_. The study of books is a languishing, feeble motion, that heats not, whereas conversation _teaches_ and _exercises_ at once.' But what if a book could be constructed on a new principle, so as to produce the effect of _conference_--of the noblest kind of conference--so as to rouse the stupid, lethargic mind to a truly _human_ activity--so as to bring out the common, human form, in all its latent actuality, from the eccentricities of the individual varieties? Something of that kind appears to be attempted here.

He cannot too often charge the attentive reader, however, that his arguments require examination. 'In _conferences_,' he says, 'it is a rule that every word that _seems_ to be good, is not immediately to be accepted. One must try it on all points, to see _how it is lodged in the author_: [perhaps he is not in earnest] _for_ one must not always _presently yield_ what truth or beauty soever seem to be in the argument.' A little delay, and opposition, the necessity of hunting, or fighting, for it, will only make it the more esteemed in the end. In such a style, 'either the author must stoutly oppose it [that is, whatsoever beauty or truth is to be the end of the argument in order to challenge the reader] or draw back, under colour of not understanding it, [and so piquing the reader into a pursuit of it] or, sometimes, perhaps, he may aid the point, and carry it _beyond_ its proper reach [and so forcing the reader to correct him. This whole work is constructed on this principle]. As when I contend with a vigorous man, I please myself with anticipating his conclusions; I ease him of the trouble of explaining himself; I strive to prevent his imagination, whilst it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and pertinency of his understanding warns and threatens me afar off. But as to _these_,--and the sequel explains this relative, for it has no antecedent in the text--as to these, I deal quite contrary with them. I _must understand and presuppose nothing but by them_.... Now, if you come to explain anything to them and confirm them (these readers), they presently catch at it, and rob you of the advantage of your interpretation. "It was what I was about to say; it was just _my_ thought, _and if I did not express it so_, it was only for want of _language_." Very pretty! Malice itself must be employed to correct this _proud ignorance_--'tis injustice and inhumanity to relieve and set him right who stands in no need of it, and is the worse for it. _I love_ to let him step deeper into the mire,'--[luring him on with his own confessions, and with my assumptions of his case] '_and so deep that if it be_ possible, they may at least discern their error. FOLLY AND ABSURDITY ARE NOT TO BE CURED BY BARE ADMONITION. What Cyrus answered him who importuned him to harangue his army upon the point of battle, "that men do not become valiant and warlike on a sudden, _by a fine oration_, no more than a man becomes a good musician by hearing a fine song," may properly be said of such an admonition as this;' or, as Lord Bacon has it, 'It were a strange speech, which spoken, or _spoken oft_, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is _by nature_ subject; it is _order, pursuit, sequence_, and _interchange of application_, which is mighty in nature.' But the other continues:--'These are apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand by a long continued education. We owe this care and this assiduity of correction and instruction to _our own_, [that is the school,] but to go to preach to the first passer-by, and to lord it over the ignorance and folly of the first we meet, is a thing that I abhor. I rarely do it, even in _my own particular conferences_, and rather surrender my cause, than proceed to these _supercilious_ and _magisterial_ instructions.' The clue to the reading of his inner book. This is what Lord Bacon also condemns, as the _magisterial_ method,--'My _humour_ is unfit, either to speak or write for _beginners_;' he will not shock or bewilder them by forcing on them prematurely the last conclusions of science; '_but_ as to things that are said in _common discourse_ or _amongst other things_, I never oppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd soever.'

'Let none _even doubt_,' says the author of the Novum Organum, who thought it wisest to steer clear _even_ of _doubt_ on such a point, 'whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish _the philosophical arts and sciences which are now in use_. On the contrary, we readily cherish their practice, cultivation, and honour; for we by no means interfere to prevent _the prevalent system_ from encouraging discussion, adorning discourses, or being employed _serviceably_ in the chair of the Professor, or the practice of common life, and being taken in short, by general consent, _as current coin_. Nay, we plainly declare that the system we offer will not be very _suitable_ for such purposes, not being easily adapted to _vulgar apprehension, except_ by EFFECTS AND WORKS. To show our _sincerity_ [hear] in professing our regard and friendly disposition towards _the received sciences_, we can refer to the evidence of our published writings, _especially_ our books on--the Advancement--[the _Advancement_] of Learning.' And the reader who can afford time for 'a second cogitation,' the second cogitation which a superficial _and_ interior meaning, of course, requires, with the aid of the key of times, will find much light on that point, here and there, in the works referred to, and especially in those parts of them in which the scientific use of popular terms is treated. 'We will not, therefore,' he continues, 'endeavour to evince it (our sincerity) any further by _words_, but content ourselves with steadily, etc., ... professedly premising that no great _progress_ can be made by the present methods in the _theory_ and contemplation of science, _and_ that they can _not_ be made to produce _any very abundant effects_.' This is the proof of his sincerity in professing his regard and friendly disposition towards them, to be taken in connection with his works on the Advancement of Learning, and no doubt it was sincere, and just to that extent to which these statements, and the practice which was connected with them, would seem to indicate; but the careful reader will perceive that it was a regard, and friendliness of disposition, which was naturally qualified by that doubly significant fact last quoted.

But the question of style is still under discussion here, and no wonder that with _such_ views of the value of the 'current coin,' and with a regard and reverence for the received sciences so deeply qualified; or, as the other has it, with a humour so unfit either to speak or write for _beginners_, a style which admitted of other efficacies than bare _proofs_, should appear to be demanded for popular purposes, or for beginners. And no wonder that with views so similar on this first and so radical point, these two men should have hit upon the same method in _Rhetoric_ exactly, though it _was_ then wholly new. But our Gascon, goes on to describe its freedoms and novelties, its imitations of the living conference, its new vitalities.

'May we not,' says the successful experimenter in this very style, 'mix with the subject of conversation and communication, the quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst friends pleasantly and _wittingly_ jesting with one another; an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, if it be not so extended and serious as _the other I just spoke of_, 'tis no less smart and ingenious, nor of less utility _as Lycurgus thought_.'