Passing over the success of Bacon's own endeavours to improve the details of physical science, which was next to nothing, and of his method as a whole, which has never been practised, we might say much of the good influence of his writings. Sound wisdom, set in sparkling wit, must instruct and amuse to the end of time: and, as against error, we repeat that Bacon is soundly wise, so far as he goes. There is hardly a form of human error within his scope which he did not detect, expose, and attach to a satirical metaphor which never ceases to sting. He is largely indebted to a very extensive reading; but the thoughts of others fall into his text with such a close-fitting compactness that he can make even the words of the Sacred Writers pass for his own. A saying of the prophet Daniel, rather a hackneyed quotation in our day, Multi pertransibunt, et augebitur scientia, stands in the title-page of the first edition of Montucla's 'History of Mathematics' as a quotation from Bacon—and it is not the only place in which this mistake oceurs. When the truth of the matter, as to Bacon's system, is fully recognized, we have little fear that there will be a reaction against the man. First, because Bacon will always live to speak for himself, for he will not cease to be read: secondly, because those who seek the truth will find it in the best edition of his works, and will be most ably led to know what Bacon was, in the very books which first showed at large what he was not.
In this year (1620) appeared the corrections under which the Congregation of the Index—i.e. the Committee of Cardinals which superintended the Index of forbidden books—proposed to allow the work of Copernicus to be read. I insert these conditions in full, because they are often alluded to, and I know of no source of reference accessible to a twentieth part of those who take interest in the question.
By a decree of the Congregation of the Index, dated March 5, 1616, the work of Copernicus, and another of Didacus Astunica, are suspended donec corrigantur, as teaching:
'Falsam illam doctrinam Pythagoricam, divinæ que Scripturæ omnino adversantem, de mobilitate Terræ et immobilitate Solis.'
But a work of the Carmelite Foscarini is:
'Omnino prohibendum atque damnandum,' because 'ostendere conatur prefatam doctrinam…consonam esse veritati et non adversari Sacre Scripturæ.'
Works which teach the false doctrine of the earth's motion
