76. The comparison of Bacon and Galileo is naturally built upon the influence which, in the same age they exerted in overthrowing the philosophy of the schools, and in founding that new discipline of real science which has rendered the last centuries glorious. Hume has given the preference to the latter, who made accessions to the domain of human knowledge so splendid, so inaccessible to cavil, so unequivocal in their results, that the majority of mankind would perhaps be carried along with this decision. There seems however to be no doubt that the mind of Bacon was more comprehensive and profound. But these comparisons are apt to involve _incommensurable_ relations. In their own intellectual characters, they bore no great resemblance to each other. Bacon had scarce any knowledge of geometry, and so far ranks much below not only Galileo, but Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz, all signalised by wonderful discoveries in the science of quantity, or in that part of physics which employs it. He has, in one of the profound aphorisms of the Novum Organum, distinguished the two species of philosophical genius, one more apt to perceive the differences of things, the other their analogies. In a mind of the highest order neither of these powers will be really deficient, and his own inductive method is at once the best exercise of both, and the best safeguard against the excess of either. But upon the whole, it may certainly be said, that the genius of Lord Bacon was naturally more inclined to collect the resemblances of nature than to note her differences. This is the case with men like him of sanguine temper, warm fancy, and brilliant wit; but it is not the frame of mind which is best suited to strict reasoning.