The works of Francis Bacon, lord chancellor of England.

278 EDITOR'S PREFACE.
raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or
sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate."
If the intricacies of a court are neither discovered nor illustrated with the same happiness as the
intricacies of philosophy, " because the distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several
lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet
in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it come to
discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs; therefore it is good, before we enter into the
former distribution, to erect and constitute one universal science, by the name of'Philosophia
Prima,' primitive or summary philosophy, as the main and common way, before we come where
the ways part and divide themselves."
"' That it be a receptacle for all such profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the
compass of any of the special parts of philosophy or sciences, but are more common and of a higher
stage.' Is not the precept of a musician, to fall from a discord or harsh accord upon a concord or
sweet accord, alike true in affection! Is not the trope of music, to avoid or slide from the close or
cadence, common with the trope of rhetoric of deceiving expectationS Is not the delight of the
quavering upon a stop in music the same with the playing of light upon the water."
If in a work written when the author was more than sixty years of age, and if, after the vexations and labours of a professional and political life, the varieties and sprightliness of youthful
imagination, are not to be found, yet the peculiar properties of his mind may easily be traced, and
the stateliness of the edifice be discovered from the magnificence of the ruins. His vigilance in
recording every fact tending to alleviate misery or to promote happiness, is noticed by Bishop Sprat
in his history of the Royal Society, where he says,,'I shall instance in the sweating-sickness.
The medicine for it was almost infallible: but, before that could be generally published, it had almost dispeopled whole towns. If the same disease should have returned, it might have been again
as destructive, had not the Lord Bacon taken care, to set down the particular course of physic fcr
it, in his History of Henry the Seventh, and so put it beyond the possibility of any private man's
invading it."
And his account of the same calamity contains an allusion to his favourite doctrine of vital spirit,
of which the philosophy is explained in his history of Life and Death, and illustrated in his fable
of Proserpine in the Wisdom of the Ancients, and which is thus stated in his Sylva Sylvarum:," The knowledge of man, hitherto, hath been determined by the view, or sight; so that whatsoever is invisible, either in respect of the fineness of the body itself; or the smallness of the parts;
or of the subtilty of the motion, is little inquired. And yet these be the things that govern nature
principally; and without which, you cannot make any true analysis and indication of the proceedings of nature. The spirits or pneumaticals, that are in all tangible bodies, are scarce known.
Sometimes they take them for vacuum; whereas they are the most active of bodies. Sometimes
they take them for air; from which they differ exceedingly, as much as wine from water; and as
wood from earth. Sometimes they will have them to be natural heat, or a portion of the element of
fire; whereas some of them are crude, and cold. And sometimes they will have them to be the virtues and qualities of the tangible parts, which they see; whereas they are things by themselves.
And then, when they come to plants, and living creatures, they call them souls. And such superficial speculations they have; like prospectives, that show things inward when they are but paintings. Neither is this a question of words, but infinitely material in nature. For spirits are nothing
else but a natural body, rarified to a proportion, and included in the tangible parts of bodies, as in
an integument. And they be no less differing one from the other, than the dense or tangible parts:
and they are in all tangible bodies whatsoever, more or less; and they are never (almost) at rest:
and from them, and their motions, principally proceed arefaction, colliquation, concoction, maturation, putrefaction, vivification, and most of the effects of nature."
One of his maxims of government for the enlargement of the bounds of empire is to be found in
his comment upon the ordinance. "That all houses of husbandry, that were used with twenty
acres of ground and upwards, should be maintained and kept up forever; together with a competent
proportion of land to be used and occupied with them;" and which is thus stated in the treatise
i"De Augmentis," which was published in the year 1623. "Let states and kingdoms that aim at
greatness by all means take heed how the nobility, and grandees, and that those which we call gentlemen, multiply too fast; for that makes the common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain
driven out of heart, and in effect nothing else but the nobleman's bond-slaves and labourers. Even
4ts you may see in coppice-wood, if you leave your studdles too thick, you shall never have clean
underwood, but shrubs and bushes: so in a country, if the nobility be too many, the commons will
lhe base and heartless, and you will bring it to that, that not the hundredth pole will be fit for an
helmet; especially as to the infantry, which is the nerve of an army; and so there will be great
population and little strength. This which I speak of hath been in no nation more clearly ccrfirmed