“To sum up the whole,” says this eulogist of what he deems Baconism against the ancient philosophy as explained by Plato, “we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy, was to provide man with what he requires, while he continues to be man, and to supply his vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow, but he aimed at the stars; therefore the shot was thrown away. Bacon fixed his eye on a mark, which was placed on _the earth_, and within bow-shot, and hit it in the white.”[33] If this were a true picture of Bacon’s mind, how sad, and low, and grovelling, must it have been. Accustomed to grieve that he suffered his soul to be polluted by contact with the world, and bowed his heart beneath the love of ill-gotten gold, we have yet found consolation in the thought that the man and the philosopher were two; and that we might dwell with rapture on the latter, take him to our heart, and make him our mind’s companion without defiling ourselves with the former. But if this were a true picture of the philosopher, we must turn from him with disgust, as one whose soul was so imbued with the low and sordid, that no intellectual powers, how sublime soever, could elevate it above what was low and sordid, mean and base. Sick at heart and disgusted with humanity, we must turn with joy to him who sought “to exalt man into a god,” who urged us “to the contemplation of pure truth,” “to fix our minds on the immutable essences of things,” and “the knowledge of the abstract, essential, eternal truth.” But thank God, it is not a true picture of Bacon’s mind and purpose in revealing to the world a new philosophy. At most it is but one half the picture, and that the lower half. It exhibits the mouth only, the vehicle of the material things which sustain the body. Yet nevertheless not to be despised; for without it the body could not live, and without the body the mind could have no communion with mortal minds, and as to them must be dead also. But it entirely cuts off and conceals the upper half of the man; the skull, the seat of mind, the residence of that God-inspired particle, which alone ennobles and makes valuable the whole body. It is true that Bacon hoped by his philosophy to supply man’s vulgar wants, and to make his sojourn here as easy and comfortable as was possible; but he sought this only as a necessary and blessed accident by the way, and not as the end of his new learning. While he laboured to benefit mankind as mortal man, he also strove to elevate him as an immortal soul; mindful of the origin which, he dared, like Plato, to hope to exalt man into a god, by leading the divine spirit, breathed into him when he was made in the image of God, to a contemplation and discovery of the secrets of the Great Artificer.