An inferior man might have made himself the mouthpiece of the hopes and aspirations of his generation after a larger science.

But to Bacon these aspirations embodied themselves in the form of a great and absorbing idea; an idea which took possession of the whole man, kindling in him a faith which nothing could quench, and a passion which nothing could dull; an idea which, for forty years, was his daily companion, his daily delight, his daily business; an idea which he was never tired of placing in ever fresh and more attractive lights, from which no trouble could wean him, about which no disaster could make him despair; an idea round which the instincts and intuitions and obstinate convictions of genius gathered, which kindled his rich imagination and was invested by it with a splendour and magnificence like the dreams of fable.

It is this idea which finds its fitting expression in the grand and stately aphorisms of the _Novum Organum_, in the varied fields of interest in the _De Augmentis_, in the romance of the _New Atlantis_.

It is this idea, this certainty of a new unexplored Kingdom of Knowledge within the reach and grasp of man, if he will be humble enough and patient enough and truthful enough to occupy it--this announcement not only of a new system of thought, but of a change in the condition of the world--a prize and possession such as man had not yet imagined; this belief in the fortunes of the human race and its issue, "such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined," yet more than verified in the wonders which our eyes have seen--it is this which gives its prerogative to Bacon's work.

That he bungled about the processes of Induction, that he talked about an unintelligible doctrine of _Forms_, did not affect the weight and solemnity of his call to learn, so full of wisdom and good-sense, so sober and so solid, yet so audaciously confident.