Beacon Lights of History, Volume 06: Renaissance and ReformationLord, John
History
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 06: Renaissance and Reformation
Lord, John
History
And then, it is necessary that we should take in view other labors which
dignified Bacon's retirement, as well as those which marked his more
active career as a lawyer and statesman,--his histories and biographies,
as well as learned treatises to improve the laws of England; his
political discourses, his judicial charges, his theological tracts, his
speeches and letters and prayers; all of which had relation to benefit
others rather than himself. Who has ever done more to instruct the
world,--to enable men to rise not in fortune merely, but in virtue and
patriotism, in those things which are of themselves the only reward? We
should consider these labors, as well as the new method he taught to
arrive at knowledge, in our estimate of the sage as well as of the man.
He was a moral philosopher, like Socrates. He even soared into the realm
of supposititious truth, like Plato. He observed Nature, like Aristotle.
He took away the syllogism from Thomas Aquinas,--not to throw contempt
on metaphysical inquiry or dialectical reasoning, but to arrive by a
better method at the knowledge of first principles; which once
established, he allowed deductions to be drawn from them, leading to
other truths as certainly as induction itself. Yea, he was also a Moses
on the mount of Pisgah, from which with prophetic eye he could survey
the promised land of indefinite wealth and boundless material
prosperity, which he was not permitted to enter, but which he had
bequeathed to civilization. This may have been his greatest gift in the
view of scientific men,--this inductive process of reasoning, by which
great discoveries have been made after he was dead. But this was not his
only legacy, for other things which he taught were as valuable, not
merely in his sight, but to the eye of enlightened reason. There are
other truths besides those of physical science; there is greatness in
deduction as well as in induction. Geometry--whose successive and
progressive revelations are so inspiring, and which, have come down to
us from a remote antiquity, which are even now taught in our modern
schools as Euclid demonstrated them, since they cannot be improved--is a
purely deductive science. The scholastic philosophy, even if it was
barren and unfruitful in leading to new truths, yet confirmed what was
valuable in the old systems, and by the severity of its logic and its
dialectical subtleties trained the European mind for the reception of
the message of Luther and Bacon; and this was based on deductions, never
wrong unless the premises are unsound. Theology is deductive reasoning
from truths assumed to be fundamental, and is inductive only so far as
it collates Scripture declarations, and interprets their meaning by the
aid which learning brings. Is not this science worthy of some regard?
Will it not live when all the speculations of evolutionists are
forgotten, and occupy the thoughts of the greatest and profoundest minds
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