Bacon has been charged with bringing philosophy down from the heights, not as of old to make men know themselves, and to be the teacher of the highest form of truth, but to be the purveyor of material utility.

It contemplates only, it is said, the "_commoda vitae_;" about the deeper and more elevating problems of thought it does not trouble itself.

It concerns itself only about external and sensible nature, about what is "of the earth, earthy." But when it comes to the questions which have attracted the keenest and hardiest thinkers, the question, what it is that thinks and wills--what is the origin and guarantee of the faculties by which men know anything at all and form rational and true conceptions about nature and themselves, whence it is that reason draws its powers and materials and rules--what is the meaning of words which all use but few can explain--Time and Space, and Being and Cause, and consciousness and choice, and the moral law--Bacon is content with a loose and superficial treatment of them.

Bacon certainly was not a metaphysician, nor an exact and lucid reasoner.

With wonderful flashes of sure intuition or happy anticipation, his mind was deficient in the powers which deal with the deeper problems of thought, just as it was deficient in the mathematical faculty.