It was a favourite text of Bacon’s, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; it is the glory of the King (a man) to find it out.” [_Prov._ xxv. 2.] Was not this very much like placing man almost on a parity with God, and exalting him into a god? And again, even misquoting to suit his lofty notions of man’s capabilities: “The spirit of man is as the lamp of God, wherewith He searches every secret.”[34] [_Prov._ xx. 27.] Surely, too, the aim of him who describes the sole end of his philosophy in the following words, is not different from that of him who urges his disciples “to fix their minds on the contemplation of the immutable essences of things.” “The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things, and the enlarging the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible.”[35] Neither does he differ at all from the philosophy of the Academy in his appreciation of pure truth. “Truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of Truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of Truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of Truth, which is the enjoying of it—_is the sovereign good of human nature_. The poet saith excellently well: ‘It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of Truth, and to see the errors and wanderings, and mist and tempests in the sea below;’[36] so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of Truth.”[37] Is this the language of one who had no higher aim than “to supply man’s vulgar wants, and whose eye was ever on a mark which was placed on earth and within bow-shot?” No! long since must Bacon have been forgotten, if his philosophy had had no higher end than that which modern utilitarianism deems its proudest boast. One more extract will suffice to evince, that in promoting the proper study of his favourite science, Natural Philosophy, he had far higher views than mere utilitarianism; though this was to be regarded by the way and as an accident of no mean importance. “All knowledge, and especially that of natural philosophy, tendeth highly to the glory of God in His power, providence and benefits appearing and engraven in His works, which without this knowledge are beheld but as through a veil, for if the heavens in the body of them do declare the glory of God to the eye, much more do they in the rule and decrees of them declare it to the understanding.”[38]