THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
their light; and in general "open and stir the earth a little about the
roots" of them. 51
This is the task which Bacon set himself in The Advancement of Learn-
ing. "It is my intention," he writes, like a king entering his realm, "to
make the circuit of knowledge, noticing what parts lie waste and un-
cultivated, and abandoned by the industry of man; with a view to engage,
by a faithful mapping out of the deserted tracts, the energies of public
and private persons in their improvement." 52 He would be the royal sur-
veyor of the weed-grown soil, making straight the road, and dividing the
fields among the laborers. It was a plan audacious to the edge of immodesty;
but Bacon was still young enough (forty-two is young in a
philosopher) to plan great voyages. U I have taken all knowledge to be my
province," he had written to Burghley in 1592; not meaning that he
would make himself a premature edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica,
but implying merely that his work would bring him into every field, as the
critic and coordinator of every science in the task of social reconstruc-
tion. The very magnitude of his purpose gives a stately magnificence
to his style, and brings him at times to the height of English prose.
So he ranges over the vast battle-ground in which human research
struggles with natural hindrance and human ignorance; and in every
field he sheds illumination. He attaches great importance to physiology
and medicine; he exalts the latter as regulating "a musical instrument of
much and exquisite workmanship easily put out of tune." 53 But he objects
to the lax empiricism of contemporary doctors, and their facile tendency
to treat all ailments with the same prescription usually physic. "Our
physicians are like bishops, that have the keys of binding and loosing,
but no more." 54 They rely too much on mere haphazard, uncoordinated
individual experience; let them experiment more widely, let them illumi-
nate human with comparative anatomy, let them dissect and if necessary
vivisect; and above all, let them construct an easily accessible and intelligible
record of experiments and results. Bacon believes that the
medical profession should be permitted to ease and quicken death
(euthanasy) where the end would be otherwise only delayed for a few
days and at the cost of great pain; but he urges the physicians to give
more study to the art of prolonging life. "This is a new part" of medicine,
"and deficient, though the most noble of all; for if it may be supplied,
medicine will not then be wholly versed in sordid cures, nor physicians
be honored only for necessity, but as dispensers of the greatest earthly
happiness that could well be conferred on mortals." 55 One can hear some
sour Schopenhauerian protesting, at this point, against the assumption
that longer life would be a boon, and urging, on the contrary, that the
speed with which some physicians put an end to our illnesses is a cona
lbid., vi, 3. **Ibid., ii, i. **De Aug., iv.
"Adv. of L.> iv, 2. "Ibid.