Bacon Delia Salter
The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded
Great news for man he brings; the powers which are working in the human life, and not those which are working without it only, are working in obedience to laws. Great things he promises, because the facts of human life are determined by forces which admit of scientific definition, and are capable of being reduced to axioms. Great things he promises, for these distinctive phenomena of human life, to their most artificial complication, are all out of the universal nature, and struggling already of themselves instinctively towards the scientific solution, already 'anticipating' science, and invoking her, and waiting and watching for her coming.
Good news the scientific reporter, in his turn, brings in also; good news for the state, good news for man; confirmations of reports indited beforehand; confirmations, from the universal scriptures, of the revelation of the divine in the human. Good news, because that law of the greater whole, which is the worthier – that law of the common-weal, which is the human law – that law which in man is reason and conscience, is in the nature of things, and not in man only – nay, not in man as yet, but prefigured only – his ideal; his true form – not in man, who 'IS' not, but 'becoming.'
But in tracking these universal laws of being, this constitution of things in general into the human constitution – in tracing these universal definitions into the specific terms of human life – the clearing up of the spontaneous notions and beliefs which the mind of man shut up to itself yields – the criticism on the terms which pre-occupy this ground is of course inevitable, whether expressed or not, and is indeed no unimportant part of the result. For this is a philosophy in which even 'the most vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature.'
This Play of the Common-weal and its scientific cure, in which the question of the true NOBILITY is so deeply inwrought throughout, is indeed but the filling up of that sketch of the constitution of man which we find on another page – that constitution whereby man, as man, is part and member of a common-weal – that constitution whereby his relation to the common-weal is essential to the perfection of his individual nature, and that highest good of it which is conservation with advancement – that constitution whereby the highest good of the particular and private nature, that which bids defiance to the blows of fortune, comprehends necessarily the good of the whole in its intention. ('For neither can a man understand VIRTUE without relation to society, nor DUTY without an inward disposition.') And that is the reason that the question of 'the government of every man over himself,' and the predominance of powers, and the wrestling of them in 'the little state of man' – the question as to which is 'nobler' – comes to be connected with the question of civil government so closely. That is the reason that this doctrine of virtue and state comes to us conjoined; that is the reason that we find this question of the consulship, and the question of heroism and personal greatness, the question of the true nobility, forming so prominent a feature in the Play of the Common-weal, inwoven throughout with the question of its cure.
'Constructions according to true definitions' make the end here. The definition is, of course, the necessary preliminary to such constructions: it does not in itself suffice. Mere science does not avail here. Scientific ARTS, scientific INSTITUTIONS of regimen and culture and cure, make the essential conditions of success in this enterprise. But we want the light of 'the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for empirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them; – we are perishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches, or something of that nature – or threatened with becoming mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some future species, gifted with better faculties for maintaining itself. It is time for a change of some sort, for the worse or the better, when we get habitually, and by a social rule, water for milk, brickdust for chocolate, silex for butter, and minerals of one kind and another for bread; when our drugs give the lie to science; when mustard refuses to 'counter-irritate,' and sugar has ceased to be sweet, and pepper, to say nothing of 'ginger' is no longer 'hot in the mouth.' The question in speculative philosophy at present is —
'Why all these things change from their ordinance,
Their natures, and pre-formed faculties,
To monstrous quality.'
– 'There's something in this more than natural,
– if philosophy could find it out!
And what we want in practical philosophy when it comes to this, is a new kind of enchantments, with capacities large enough to swallow up these, as the rod of Moses swallowed up the rods of the Egyptians. That was a good test of authority; and nothing short of that will answer our present purpose; when not that which makes life desirable only, but life itself is assailed, and in so comprehensive a manner, the revolutionary point of sufferance and stolidity is reached. We cannot stay to reason it thus and thus with 'the garotte' about our throats: the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried here also. Now that we have 'found out' oxygen and hydrogen, and do not expect to alter their ways of proceeding by any epithets that we may apply to them, or any kind of hocus-pocus that we may practise on them, it is time to see what gen, or genus it is, that proceeds in these departments in so successful a manner, and with so little regard to our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate in a general way the unquestionable fact of a degeneracy, is of no use, for that has been thoroughly tried already.
The experiment in the 'common logic,' as Lord Bacon calls it, has been a very long and patient one; the historical result is, that it forces assent, and not things.
The question here is not of divinity, as some might suppose. There is no question about that. Nobody need be troubled about that. It does not depend on this, or that man's arguments, happily. The true divinity, the true inspiration, is of that which was and shall be. Its foundations are laid, – its perennial source is found, not in the soul of man, not in the constitution of the mind of man only, but in the nature of things, and in the universal laws of being. The true divinity strikes its foundations to the universal granite; it is built on 'that rock where philosophy and divinity join close;' and heaven and earth may pass, but not that.
The question here is of logic. The question is between Lord Bacon and Aristotle, and which of these two thrones and dominions in speculation and practice the moderns are disposed on the whole to give their suffrages to, in this most vital department of human practice, in this most vital common human concern and interest. The question is of these demoniacal agencies that are at large now upon this planet – on both sides of it – going about with 'tickets of leave,' of one kind and another; for the logic that we employ in this department still, though it has been driven, with hooting, out of every other, and the rude systems of metaphysics which it sustains, do not take hold of these things. They pay no attention to our present method of reasoning about them. There is no objection to syllogisms, as Lord Bacon concedes; – they are very useful in their proper place. The difficulty is, that the subtlety of nature in general, as exhibited in that result which we call fact, far surpasses the subtlety of nature, when developed within that limited sphere, which the mind of man makes; and nature is much more than a match for him, when he throws himself upon his own internal gifts of ratiocination, and undertakes to dictate to the universe. The difficulty is just this; – here we have it in a nut-shell, as we are apt to get it in Lord Bacon's aphorisms.
'The syllogism consists of propositions; these of words. Words are the signs of notions: notions represent things:' [If these last then] – 'if our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground. But [they are] they are, for the most part, improperly abstracted, and deduced from things,' and that is the difficulty which this new method of learning, propounded in connection with this so radical criticism of the old one, undertakes to remedy. For there are just two methods of learning, as he goes on to tell us, with increasing, but cautious, amplifications. The false method lays down from the very outset some abstract and useless generalities, —the other, gradually rises to those principles which are really the most common in nature. 'Axioms determined on in argument, can never assist in the discovery of new effects, for the subtlety of nature is vastly superior to that of argument. But axioms properly and regularly abstracted from particulars, easily point out and define NEW PARTICULARS, and impart activity to the sciences.'
'We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to nature, THE ANTICIPATION OF NATURE (as being rash and premature), and that which is properly deduced from THINGS, THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.' – (A radical distinction, which it is the first business of the new machine of the mind to establish). 'Anticipations are sufficiently powerful in producing unanimity; for if men were all to become even uniformly mad, they might agree tolerably well with each other,' (but not with nature; there's the trouble; that is the assent that is wanting).
'In sciences founded upon opinions and dogmas, it is right to make use of anticipations and logic, if you wish to force assent, and not things.'
The difference, then, between the first hasty conceptions and rude theories of the nature of things, – the difference between the preconceptions which make the first steps of the human mind towards the attainment of truth, and those conceptions and axioms which are properly abstracted from things, and which correspond to their natures, is the difference in which science begins.
And we shall find that the truths of science in this department of it, which makes our present subject are quite as new, quite as far out of the road of common opinion, and quite as unattainable by the old method of learning, as those truths with which science has already overpowered the popular notions and theories in those departments in which its powers have been already tested.
These rude natural products of the human understanding, while it is yet undisciplined by the knowledge of nature in general, which in their broadest range proceed from the human speciality, and are therefore liable to an exterior criticism; these first words and natural beliefs of men, through all their range, from the a priori conceptions of the schools, down to the most narrow and vulgar preconceptions and prejudices of the unlearned, the author of the 'Novum Organum,' and of the 'Advancement of Learning,' by a bold and dexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under the seemingly fanciful, – but, considering the time, none too fanciful, – designation of 'the Idols'; – (he knew, indeed, that the original of the term would suggest to the scholar a more literal reading), – 'the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den, of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees reason – scientific, as well as rhetorical reason, – for dividing and distinguishing them. But under that common designation of images, and false ones too, he subjects them to a common criticism, in behalf of that mighty hitherto unknown, unsought, universality, which is all particulars – which is more universal than the notions of men, and transcends the grasp of their beliefs and pre-judgments; – that universal fact which men are brought in contact with, in all their doing, and in all their suffering, whether pleasurable or painful. That universal, actual fact, whose science philosophy has hitherto set aside, in favour of its own pre-notions, as a thing not worth taking into the account, – that mystic, occult, unfathomed fact, that is able to assert itself in the face of our most authoritative pre-notions, whose science, under the vulgar name of experience, all the learning of the world had till then made over with a scorn ineffable to the cultivation of the unlearned. Under that despised name which the old philosophy had omitted in its chart, the new perceived that the ground lay, and made all sail thither.
We cannot expect to find then any of those old terms and definitions included in the trunk of the new system, which is science. None of those airy fruits that grow on the branches which those old roots of a false metaphysics must needs nurture, – none of those apples of Sodom which these have mocked us with so long, shall the true seeker find on these boughs. The man of science does not, indeed, care to displace those terms in the popular dialect here, any more than the chemist or the botanist will insist on reforming the ordinary speech of men with their truer language in the fields they occupy. The new Logician and Metaphysician will himself, indeed, make use of these same terms, with a hint to 'men of understanding,' perhaps, as to the sense in which he uses them.
Incorporated into a system of learning on which much human labour has been bestowed, they may even serve some good practical purposes under certain conditions of social advancement. And besides, they are useful for adorning discourse, and furnish abundance of rhetorical material. Above all, they are invaluable to the scholastic controversialists, and the new philosopher will not undertake to displace them in these fields. He steadfastly refuses to come into any collision with them. He leaves them to take their way without. He makes them over to the vulgar, and to those old-fashioned schools of logic and metaphysics, whose endless web is spun out of them. But when the question is of practice, that is another thing. It is the scientific word that is wanting here. That is the word which in his school he will undertake to teach.
When it comes to practice, professional practice, like the botanist and the chemist, he will make his own terms. He has a machine expressly for that purpose, by which new terms are framed and turned out in exact accordance with the nature of things. He does not wish to quarrel with any one, but in the way of his profession, he will have none of those old confused terms thrust upon him. He will examine them, and analyze them; and all, —all that is in them, – all, and more, will be in his; but scientifically cleared, 'divided with the mind, that divine fire,' and clothed with power.
And it is just as impossible that those changes for the human relief which the propounder of the New Logic propounded as its chief end, should ever be effected by means of the popular terms which our metaphysicians are still allowed to retain in the highest fields of professional practice, as it would have been to effect those lesser reforms which this logic has already achieved, if those old elementary terms, earth, fire, air, water, – terms which antiquity thought fine enough; which passed the muster of the ancient schools without suspicion, had never to this hour been analyzed.
It is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our magnetic telegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia Medica, and all the new inventions of modern science for man's relief, if the terms which were simple terms in the vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had never been tested with the edge of the New Machine, and divided with its divine fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least elementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to suppose that the true and nobler ends of science can ever be attained, so long as the powers that are actual in our human life, which are still at large in all their blind instinctive demoniacal strength there, which still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of science there, while we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands, – so long as these still slip through the ring of our airy 'words,' still riot in the freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions, – so long as a mere human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence, – keeping out the true generalizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, – the creative word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom, – the word to which rude nature bows anew, – the word which is Power.
But while the world is resounding with those new relations to the powers of nature which the science of nature has established in other fields, in that department of it, which its Founder tells us is 'the end and term of Natural Science in the intention of man,' in that department of it to which his labor was directed; we are still given over to the inventions of Aristotle, applied to those rude conceptions and theories of the nature of things which the unscientific ages have left to us. Here we have still the loose generalization, the untested affirmation, the arrogant pre-conception, the dogmatic assumption. Here we have the mere phenomena of the human speciality put forward as science, without any attempt to find their genera, – to trace them to that which is more known to nature, so as to connect them practically with the diversity and opposition, which the actual conditions of practice present.
We have not, in short, the scientific language here yet. The vices and the virtues do not understand the names by which we call them, and undertake to command them. Those are not the names in that 'infinite book of secrecy' which they were taught in. They find a more potent order there.
And thus it is, that the demons of human life go abroad here still, impervious alike to our banning and our blessing. The powers of nature which are included in the human nature, – the powers which in this specific form of them we are undertaking to manage with these vulgar generalizations, tacked together with the Aristotelian logic – these powers are no more amenable to any such treatment in this form, than they are in those other forms, in which we are learning to approach them with another vocabulary.
The forces which are developed in the human life will not answer to the names by which we call them here, any more than the lightning would answer to the old Magician's incantation, – any more than it would have come if the old Logician had called it by his name, – which was just as good as the name – and no better, than the name, which the priest of Baal gave it, – any more than it would have come, if the old Logician had undertaken to fetch it, with the harness of his syllogism.
But when the new Logician, who was the new Magician, came, with 'the part operative' of his speculation; with his 'New Machine,' with the rod of his new definition, with the staff of his genera and species, – when the right name was found for it, it heard, it heard afar, it heard in its heaven and came. It came fast enough then. It was 'asleep,' but it awaked. It was 'taking a journey' but it came. There was no affectation of the graces of the gods when the new interpreter and prophet of nature, who belonged to the new order of Interpreters, sent up his little messenger, without any pomp or ceremony, or 'windy suspiration of forced breath,' and fetched it.
But that was an Occidental philosopher, one of the race who like to see effects of some kind, when there is nothing in the field to forbid it. That was one of the Doctors who are called in this system 'Interpreters of nature,' to distinguish them from those who 'rashly anticipate' it. He did not make faces, and cut himself with knives and lances, after a prescribed manner, and prophesy until evening, though there was no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. He knew that that god at least would not stop on his journey; or if, peradventure, he slept, would not be wakened by any such process.
And the farther the world proceeds on that 'new road' it is travelling at present, the more the demand will be heard in this quarter, for an adaptation of instrumentalities to the advanced, and advancing ages of modern learning and civilization, and to that more severe and exacting genius of the occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and practical genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this advancement proceeds.