of all things, a clear knowledge of their duty was wanting to mankind."
And He, whose name, by the consent of nations, is above all praise, the inventor and founder of the Inductive Philosophy, thus breathes forth his pious meditation, "Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found thee in thy temples." Bacon's Works, V. 4. fol. p. 487.
The sentiment here quoted had been long familiar to him, for it pervades his writings; it is thus strikingly expressed in his immortal work. "Concludamus igitur theologian sacram ex Verbo et Oraculis Dei, non ex lumine Naturæ aut Rationis dictamine hauriri debere. Scriptum est enim cœli enarrant Glorium Dei, at nusquam scriptum invenitur, cceli enarrant Voluntatem Dei."[1][2]
Having then this broad line marked out before us, and
- ↑ Bacon De Augm. Scient. Lib. IX. ch.i.
- ↑ "Nothing," says Sir I. F. W. Herschel, "can be more unfounded than the objection which has been taken in limine, by persons well-meaning perhaps, certainly narrow-minded, against the study of natural philosophy, and indeed against all science,—that it fosters in its cultivators an undue and overweening self-conceit, leads them to doubt the immortality of the soul, and to scoff at revealed religion. Its natural effect, we may confidently assert, on every well constituted mind, is and must be the direct contrary. No doubt, the testimony of natural reason, on whatever exercised, must of necessity stop short of those truths which it is the object of revelation to make known; but while it places the existence and principal attributes of a Deity on such grounds as to render doubt absurd and atheism ridiculous, it unquestionably opposes no natural or necessary obstacle to further progress; on the contrary, by cherishing as a vital principle an unbounded spirit of inquiry, and ardency of expectation, it unfetters the mind from prejudices of every kind, and leaves it open and free to every impression of a higher nature which it is susceptible of receiving, guarding only against enthusiasm and self deception by a habit of strict investigation, but encouraging, rather than suppressing, everything that can offer a prospect or a hope beyond the present obscure and unsatisfactory state. The character of the true Philosopher is to hope all things not impossible, and to believe all things not treasonable." Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 7.
