that the knowledge which we now possess will not teach a man even what to wish. Lastly-though this is a matter of less moment-if any of our politicians, who use to make their calculations and conjectures according to persons and precedents, must needs interpose his judgment in a thing of this nature,—I would but remind him how (according to the ancient fable) the lame man keeping the course won the race of the swift man who left it and that there is no thought to be taken about precedents, for the thing is without precedent.

Now for my plan of publication-those parts of the work which have it for their object to find out and bring into correspondence such minds as are prepared and disposed for the argument, and to purge the floors of men's understandings, I wish to be published to the world and circulate from mouth to mouth the rest I would have passed from hand to hand, with selection and judgment. Not but I know that it is an old trick of impostors to keep a few of their follies back from the public which are indeed no better than those they put forward: but in this case it is no imposture at all, but a sober foresight, which tells me that the formula itself of interpretation, and the discoveries made by the same, will thrive better if committed to the charge of some fit and selected minds, and kept private. This however is other people's concern. For myself, my heart is not set upon any of those things which depend upon external accidents. I am not hunting for fame: I have no desire to found a sect, after the fashion of heresiarchs; and to look for any private gain from such an undertaking as this, I count both ridiculous and base. Enough for me the consciousness of well-deserving, and those real and effectual results with which Fortune itself cannot interfere.

Such then was the project with which Bacon was all this time labouring in secret; such, and no less, the issues which he believed to be involved in it. But though his faith in the principle never failed, he knew that it could not be fairly tried without the cooperation of many men and of more than one generation; and when he came to sound men's opinions in the matter, he discovered that he had a preliminary difficulty to encounter in finding any who would listen to him.'

1 "Et quos socios habes? Ego certe (inquam) profecto nullos; quin nec quenquam habeo quocum familiariter de hujusmodi rebus colloqui possim, ut me saltem explicem et exacuam."-Philosophical Works, Vol. III. p. 559.

Now if he could get the King to take an interest in it, a great part of this difficulty would be removed; and to bring this about, the best chance would be to produce some practical and notable proof of proficiency in matters of which the King was already quali fied to judge. For experimental philosophy James had not as yet shown any taste; and having been trained in the ancient learning, he was not likely to be attracted by a proposal to set aside all received doctrines and begin afresh from the beginning; but a general survey and criticism of the existing stock of knowledge was a work which few men then living were better qualified to appreciate, and in which he was almost sure to take a lively interest; and such a survey being the natural and legitimate foundation of any attempt at a large and general reform, it seems to have occurred to Bacon that this was the thing to begin with, and this the very time for it. Here was a King, still in the prime of life, devoted to peace, sympathizing largely with the interests of mankind, eminent even among learned men in a learned age for proficiency in all kinds of learning, coming out of straits and troubles into a great fortune, his imagination raised, his habits unfixed, his direction not yet taken: why should he not be excited to seek his greatness in a work like this? Accordingly, when Bacon told Cecil, on the 3rd of July, 1603, that he should put his ambition only upon his pen, it seems to me probable that he had newly conceived the design of writing his work on the 'Proficience and Advancement of Learning.' I say newly, for it was certainly not the same work on which he had been engaged before, nor any part of it: nor was it till some years after that he determined to include it in the general design. If so, the first book,which may be described as a kind of inaugural lecture on the dignity and merit of learning as a work for the kings and potentates of the earth, must apparently have been written during this year;2 and we need seek no further for an account of the way in which his time during the remainder of it was chiefly spent.

4.

It was not, however, his only occupation. Though he had little or nothing to do this year as a member of the King's Learned Counsel, there were one or two subjects of such pressing importance in the political department, that he made bold to offer his opinion upon them.

See my preface to the De Augmentis Scientiarum. Philos. Works, Vol. I. p. 416. 2 See my preface to the 'Advancement of Learning.' Philos. Works, Vol. III.

p. 255.

The first that had to be dealt with was the union of England and Scotland. We have seen that he had come away from his first interview with the King with an impression that he was "hastening to a mixture of both kingdoms and nations, faster perhaps than policy would conveniently bear." Now as much haste as was compatible with good speed, no man could wish for more than Bacon himself: for no man saw sooner or more clearly that England, well united with Scotland, had all natural requirements for becoming the greatest monarchy in the world. But he knew that things would not unite by being merely put together, and that perfect mixture required many conditions, of which time was one of the most indispensable. And I suppose it was in the hope, not merely of drawing a little attention to his own pretensions as a scholar and a thinker (though that was something), but also of tempering the King's impatience and reconciling him to the cautious pace at which it would be necessary to go, that he took leave to present him with a short philosophical treatise concerning the conditions under which perfect union takes place in nature-an essay still interesting, both as a specimen of the Philosophia Prima, applied to a particular business in the details and practical management of which he was soon to be deeply engaged, and as showing that it was not as a member of the Learned Counsel, but as a scholar, a student, and a man of contemplation, that he chose to make his first approaches:-a fact agreeing very well with my supposition that he regarded this as (for the present at least) his proper vocation and most promising career. And yet his aim is not the less practical, and bearing on the immediate business; for the conclusion is, that Nature and Time must be left to do the work, and that artificial forcing will only spoil the operation: the very warning which the King stood most in need of.

This little tract is said to but I never met with a copy.

have been printed in 1603, in 12mo,1 There is, however, a good manuscript of it in the Harleian Collection, in the hand (if I am not mistaken) of the transcriber of the Valerius Terminus;' and if so, contemporary and authentic,2 and it is printed in the Resuscitatio. The text here given is formed upon a collation of these two.

Whence Bacon derived his idea of the nature of the Persian Magic, is a question with which we need not trouble ourselves here. For the present occasion it is enough to know that it was formerly the subject of many speculations; inferences perhaps from a remark in Plato, that the princes of Persia were instructed in politics and in magic by the same persons;-and that the method of analogy in

1 Birch's edition of Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 257.

2 See Philosophical Works, Vol. III. p. 206.

which Bacon supposed it to consist was believed by him, not only at this time but ever after, to be a sound one.1

A BRIEF DISCOURSE TOUCHING THE HAPPY UNION OF THE KINGDOMS OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Dedicated in private to His Majesty.2

I do not find it strange (excellent King) that when Heraclitus, he that was surnamed the obscure, had set forth a certain book which is not now extant, many men took it for a discourse of nature, and many others took it for a treatise of policy and matter of estate. For there is a great affinity and consent between the rules of nature, and the true rules of policy: the one being nothing else but an order in the government of the world, and the other an order in the government of an estate. And therefore the education and erudition of the kings of Persia was in a science which was termed by a name then of great reverence, but now degenerate and taken in ill part: for the Persian magic, which was the secret literature of their kings, was an observation of the contemplations of nature and an application thereof to a sense politic; taking the fundamental laws of nature, with the branches and passages of them, as an original and first model, whence to take and describe a copy and imitation for government.

After this manner the aforesaid instructors set before their kings the examples of the celestial bodies, the sun, the moon, and the rest, which have great glory and veneration, but no rest or intermission; being in a perpetual office of motion, for the cherishing, in turn and in course, of inferior bodies: expressing likewise the true manner of the motions of government, which though they ought to be swift and rapid in respect of dispatch and the occasions, yet are they to be constant and regular, without wavering or confusion.

So did they represent unto them how the heavens do not enrich themselves by the earth and the seas, nor keep no dead stock or untouched treasures of that they draw to them from below; but whatsoever moisture they do levy and take from

1 See Advancement of Learning,' Philos. Works, Vol. III. p. 348; and De Aug. Scient. Vol. I. P. 542.

2 Harl. MSS. 532, fo. 61.

3 an application of the contemplations and observations of nature unto : R.

both elements in vapours, they do spend and turn back again in showers; only holding and storing them up for a time, to the end to issue and distribute them in season.

But chiefly they did express and expound unto them the fundamental law of nature, whereby all things do subsist and are preserved; which is, That every thing in nature, although it have his private and particular affection and appetite, and doth follow and pursue the same in small moments, and when it is delivered and free from more general and common respects, yet nevertheless when there is question or case for sustaining of the more general, they forsake their own particularities and proprieties, and attend and conspire to uphold the public.

So we see the iron in small quantity will ascend and approach to the loadstone upon a particular sympathy: but if it be any quantity of moment, it leaveth his appetite of amity with the loadstone, and like a good patriot falleth to the earth, which is the place and region of massy bodies.

So again the water and other like bodies do fall towards the centre of the earth, which is (as was said) their region or country: and yet we see nothing more usual in all water-works and engines, than that the water (rather than to suffer any distraction or disunion in nature) will ascend, forsaking the love to his own region or country, and applying itself to the body next adjoining.

But it were too long a digression to proceed to more examples of this kind. Your Majesty yourself did fall upon a passage of this nature in your gracious speech of thanks unto your counsel, when acknowledging princely their vigilancies and well-deservings, it pleased you to note, that it was a success and event above the course of nature, to have so great change with so great a quiet forasmuch as sudden and great mutations, as well in state as in nature, are rarely without violence and perturbation. So as still I conclude there is (as was said) a congruity between the principles of Nature and Policy. And lest that instance may seem to oppone to this assertion, I may even in that particular, with your Majesty's favour, offer unto you a type or pattern in nature, much resembling this event in your estate; namely earthquakes, which many of them bring ever much terror and wonder, but no actual hurt; the earth trembling for a moment, and suddenly stablishing in perfect quiet as it was before.

1 vigilancie: MS.