They are written with great clearness and ability, and, taken together, present such a view of Bacon's philosophy as is to be found nowhere else, and amply answers the requirements of students, however exacting. Far too much credit has been attributed to Bacon, in popular estimation, as the author of a system upon which the modern progress of science is based.[A] Whatever his system may have been, it is certain that it has had little direct influence upon the advance of knowledge. But, perhaps, too little credit has been given to Bacon as a man whose breadth and power of thought and amplitude of soul enabled a spirit that has at once stimulated its progress and elevated its disciples. That Bacon believed himself to have invented a system wholly new admits of no doubt; but it is doubtful whether he ever definitely arranged this system in his own mind. And it is a curious and interesting fact, and one illustrative, at least, of the imperfection of Bacon's exposition of his own method, that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Spedding, the two most conscientious investigators of Bacon's thought, should have arrived at different conclusions in regard to the distinctive peculiarities of the Baconian philosophy. Mr. Spedding, in his very interesting preface to the "Parasceve," suggests, since his own and Mr. Ellis's conclusions, though different, do not appear irreconcilable, "whether there be not room for a third solution, more complete than either, as including both." Both he and Mr. Ellis set out from the position, that "the philosophy which Bacon meant to announce was in some way essentially different, not only from any that had been before, but from any that has been since,"--a position very much opposed to the popular opinion. "The triumph of his [Bacon's] principles of scientific investigation," said, not long since, a writer in the "Quarterly Review," whose words may be taken as representative of the common ideas on the matter, "has made it unnecessary to revert to the reasoning by which they were established."[B] But the truth seems to be, that the merits of Bacon belong, as Mr. Ellis well says, "to the spirit rather than to the positive precepts of his philosophy." Nor does it appear that Bacon himself, although he indulged the highest hopes and felt the securest confidence in the results of his perfected system, supposed that he had given to it that perfection which was required. In the "De Augmentis Scientiarum," published in 1623, two years and a half before his death, he says: "I am preparing and laboring with all my might to make the mind of man, by help of art, a match for the nature of things, (_ut mens per artem fiat rebus par_,) to discover an art of Indication and Direction, whereby all other arts, with their axioms and works, may be detected and brought to light. For I have, with good reason, set this down as wanting." (Lib. v. c. 2.) Bacon regarded his method, not only as one wholly new, but also of universal application,