THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

io8 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
ton, the hypothesis that light travels in curved, not straight lines; deduced
from it the conclusion that a star appearing to be (on the straight-line
theory) in a certain position in the heavens is really a little to one side of
that position; and he invited experiment and observation to test the con-
clusion. Obviously the function of hypothesis and imagination is greater
than Bacon supposed; and the proceduce of science is more direct and
circumscribed than in the Baconian scheme. Bacon himself anticipated
the superannuation of his method; the actual practice of science would
discover better modes of investigation than could be worked out in the
interludes of statesmanship. "These things require some ages for the
ripening of them."
Even a lover of the Baconian spirit must concede, too, that the great
Chancellor, while laying down the law for science, failed to keep abreast
of the science of his time. He rejected Copernicus and ignored Kepler
and Tycho Brahe; he depreciated Gilbert and seemed unaware of Harvey.
In truth, he loved discourse better than research; or perhaps he had
no time for toilsome investigations. Such work as he did in philosophy
and science was left in fragments and chaos at his death; full of repetitions,
contradictions, aspirations, and introductions. Ars longa, vita
brevis
soul.
art is long and time is fleeting: this is the tragedy of every great
To assign to so overworked a man, whose reconstruction of philosophy
aad to be crowded into the crevices of a harassed and a burdened political
career, the vast and complicated creations of Shakespeare, is to waste the
time of students with the parlor controversies of idle theorists. Shakespeare
lacks just that which distinguishes the lordly Chancellor erudition and
philosophy. Shakespeare has an impressive smattering of many sciences,
and a mastery of none; in all of them he speaks with the eloquence of an
amateur. He accepts astrology: "This huge state . . . whereon the stars
in secret influence comment." 108 He is forever making mistakes which
the learned Bacon could not possibly have made : his Hector quotes Aristotle
and his Coriolanus alludes to Cato; he supposes the Lupercalia to be
a hill; and he understands Caesar about as profoundly as Caesar is understood
by H. G. Wells. He makes countless references to his early life and
his matrimonial tribulations. He perpetrates vulgarities, obscenities and
puns natural enough in the gentle roisterer who could not quite outlive
the Stratford rioter and the butcher's son, but hardly to be expected in
the cold and calm philosopher. Carlyle calls Shakespeare the greatest of
intellects; but he was rather the greatest of imaginations, and the keenest
eye. He is an inescapable psychologist, but he is not a philosopher: he has
no structure of thought unified by a purpose for his own life and for man-
kind. He is immersed in love and its problems, and thinks of philosophy,
through Montaigne's phrases, only when his heart is broken. Otherwise
^Sonnet xv.