66

and hence, also, a third, which "derived the kingdom of
forms and ideas in essences by the addition of a kind of
fantastic matter,"
66
an abstract matter," together with
"abstract ideas and their powers." This last was a mere
"superstition," and this "troop of dreamers had nearly
overpowered the more sober class of thinkers." But in his
view, "these assertions respecting abstract matter were as
absurd as it would be to say the universe and nature were
made out of categories and such dialectic notions." He
agreed with the more ancient philosophy, that "the prim-
itive matter (such as can be the origin of things "), the first
entity,
ought no less to possess a real existence than those
which flow from it; rather more. For it has its own
peculiar essence, and from it come all the rest." In a word,
there was no matter distinct from the causative thinking
essence itself; and this only had a real existence. "Almost
all the ancients," says he, " Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anax-
imines, Heraclitus, Democritus, though disagreeing in other
respects upon the prime matter, joined in this, that they
held an active matter with a form, both arranging its own
form, and having within itself the principle of motion."
Thus it clearly appears, that matter was to be considered
as power of the nature of the power of thought in perpetual
activity, producing motion, moving itself, giving form, and
being the only real substance, a thinking essence;
matter else being a mere figment of the brain.

-

- all

But cloudy logomachies and visionary mystifications were to cease. Empty categories and syllogistic sophistries were to be swept away. Theological haze was to be cleared up. As touching Aristotle and the Church, the question between him and the ancient was not of "the virtue of the race, but of the rightness of the way": it was only "part of the same thing more large." He would have men return to the study of nature in a scientific manner, well knowing, doubtless, whither that course would lead them in the end. Physics and metaphysics were to go hand in hand together

as inseparable parts of natural philosophy. And when, in the course of time, a sufficiently ample foundation should be laid in a thorough knowledge of nature, the loftier superstructure of the Philosophia Prima, the Science of Sciences, Philosophy itself, might be raised and completed. He seems to have contemplated some statement of the final result in the Sixth Part of the Great Instauration; but he tells us that it was "both beyond his power and expectation to perfect and conclude it." He might make "no contemptible beginning"; and "men's good fortune would furnish the result; such as men could not easily comprehend, or define, in the present state of things and the mind.” Nor was it to treat "only of contemplative enjoyment, but of the common affairs and fortune of mankind, and of a complete power of action." This part was not written, but enough appears in his writings to show, that it would have been no materialistic science of dead substratum, no economic science of practical fruit merely, nor any sort of machine philosophy.

§ 2. THE PHILOSOPHER a poet.

In the midst of these abstruse considerations of the nature of cause and form, we fall upon this passage in his discussion of the opinion of Parmenides, in this same Fable of Cupid, "That the first forms and first entities are active, and that so the first substances also, cold and heat; that these, nevertheless, exist incorporeally, but that there is subjoined to them a passive and potential matter, which has a corporeal magnitude," and that "there are four coessential natures, and conjoined, . . . light, heat, rarity, and motion; . . . for a true philosopher will dissect, not sever nature (for they, who will not dissect, must pull her asunder), and the prime matter is to be laid down joined with the primitive form, as also with the first principle of motion, as it is found." And so, in the play, Hamlet is made to say of the ghost:

...

"His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable." - Act III. Sc. 4.

A commixture of studies as of law, nature, poetry, philosophy, may sometimes very curiously introduce similar ideas, illustrations, and language into very different writings of the same author, and that, too, perhaps all unconsciously to himself. In his dedication of his "Arguments of Law" to the Society of Gray's Inn, this idea of severing nature is introduced thus: "Nevertheless, thus much I may say with modesty, that these arguments which I have set forth (most of them) are upon subjects not vulgar, and therewithal, in regard of the commixture that the course of my life hath made of law with other studies, they may have the more variety and perhaps the more depth of reason: for the reasons of municipal laws severed from the grounds of nature, manners, and policy, are like wall-flowers, which, though they grow high upon the crests of states, yet they have no deep roots." Again, he lays it down as a rule in physics, "that the connexion of things should not be severed," as it "tends to preserve the fabric of the universe." And so Albany is made to say of the unnatural daughters of Lear:

:

"That nature which contemns its origin
Cannot be border'd certain in itself;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither,

And come to deadly use.". - Act IV. Sc. 2.

And the same idea underlies these beautiful lines of the "Othello" :

"but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat,

That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd thy rose,

I cannot give it vital growth again;

It needs must wither." Act V. Sc. 2.

And Lear himself may very well be supposed to hold this colloquy with the designing Gloster and the good Edgar,

without being considered positively mad, only mad in craft,

"Lear. First, let me talk with this philosopher. -
What is the cause of thunder?

Kent. Good my lord, take his offer: go into th' house.
Lear. I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban.

What is your study?

Edg. How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin. . . .
Glos. I do beseech your grace,

sir!.

With him:
Act III. Sc. 4.

The philosopher, in the age of Shakespeare, had to sail sometimes under a cloud as dark as the disguise of Edgar, or the madness of Lear, or the world might be as dangerous to him as was that awful night of cataracts and hurricanoes,

"Sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,"

to the singed white head of Lear. Nevertheless, would Francis Bacon, in his more private and secret studies, still keep company with his first and last love, the Noble Philosopher. And he says, in the Essay on Goodness and Goodness of Nature, “This of all virtues and dignities of the mind is the greatest; being the character of the Deity: and without it man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing; no better than a kind of vermin." And surely this must have been the same philosopher that founded the College of Universal Science, or Solomon's House, the very end of which was "the knowledge of Causes"; which question of the cause appears frequently in the plays, as again thus:

"Lear. Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature, that makes these hard hearts? Act III. Sc. 6.

Bacon had studied the works of Plato, which, as they had never been translated into English, must have been for the

most part a sealed book to William Shakespeare. There are distinct traces of this study, in both the writings of Bacon and the plays, not merely in the idea and doctrine, but sometimes even in the expression. Plato relates a story of a learned philosopher of the ancient Thebes, who was consulted for his wisdom by the king of Egypt; and in the Phædo of Plato, the learned Simmias is addressed in the dialogue as 66 my Theban friend." It is, of course, not at all certain, but very easy to believe, that the writer of the play had this story in mind, when he put these words into the mouth of Lear:

"I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban."

For another instance, take this from Bacon: "Plato casteth his burden and saith, That he will revere him as a God, that can truly divide and define: which cannot be but by true forms and differences, wherein I join hands with him, confessing as much, as yet assuming to myself little." And thus it stands in the "Hamlet":

“Osr. Sir, here is newly come to court, Laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and great showing.

....

Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially, would dizzy the arithmetic of memory."- Act V. Sc. 2.

And again says Bacon, in the same work : —

"But I found myself constructed more for the contemplations of truth than for aught else, as having a mind sufficiently mobile for recognizing (what is most of all) the similitude of things, and sufficiently fixed and intent for observing the subtleties of differences, and possessing love of investigation, patience in doubting, pleasure in meditating, delay in asserting, facility in returning to wisdom, and neither affecting novelty, nor admiring antiquity, and hating all imposture."

Plato alludes to the "weaving a kind of Penelope's web the reverse way"; Bacon, several times, uses the same simile of "Penelope's web doing and undoing"; and in the second part of the "Henry VI." there is an allusion to

1 Int. of Nat., Works (Phil.), I. 90.