BARROW. Those who are quite satisfied, sit stil and do nothing those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world. NEWTON. And are driven out of it for their pains. BARROW. Men seldom have loved their teachers. NEWTON. How happens it then that you are loved so generally? for who is there, capable of instruction, that you have not taught? Never, since I have been at the university, have I heard of any one your enemy who was not a calvinist; a sect wherin good-humoured and gracefully-minded men are scanty. BARROW. Do not attribute the failing to the sect, which hath many strong texts of Scripture for its support; but rather think that the doctrines are such as are most consentaneous to the malignant and morose. There are acrid plants that attract as many insects as the sweeter, but insects of another kind. All substances have their commodities, all opinions their partisans. I have been happy in my pupils; but in none of them have I observed such a spirit of investigation as in you. Keep it, however, within the precincts of experimental and sure philosophy, which are spacious enough for the excursions of the most vigorous mind, and varied enough for the most inconstant and flighty. Never hate, never dislike men, for difference of religion. Some receive baleful impressions in it more easily than others, as they do diseases. We do not hate a child for catching the small-pcx, but pity its sores and blemishes. Let the calvinist hate us: he represents his God as a hater; he represents him as capricious: I wish he would love us, even from caprice; but he seems to consider this part of the divine nature as a weakness. Come; unroll your paper; let me hear what you have to say on Bacon's Essays; a volume I place in the hand of those only who appear to me destined to be great. NEWTON. He says in his Preface, "I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other works have been most current." How can the very thing of which you are speaking be another? BARROW. This is a chasm in logic, into which many have fallen. NEWTON. I had scarcely begun the first Essay, when an elderly gentleman of another college came into the room, took up the book, and redd aloud, "This same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves." One might well imagine, said he, unpleasing to themselves, if full of melancholy and indisposition. But how much of truth and wisdom is compressed in these few sentences! Do not you wonder that a man capable of all this, should likewise be capable of such foolery as the following? "First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen." I looked with wonder at him, knowing his seriousness and gravity, his habits and powers of ratiocination, and his blameless life. But perhaps I owe to his question the intensity and sedulity with which I have examined every page of Bacon. He called the words I have quoted, dull and colourless bombast; he declared them idle in allusion, and false, and impious. I was appalled. He added, I do not know, Mr. Newton, whether you have any brother: if you have, what would you think of your father, when he gave a cherry to one, a whipping to a second, and burnt the fingers of the third against the bars of the kitchen grate; and vouchsafed no better reason for it, than that he had resolved to do so the very night he begot them? Election is partiality; partiality is injustice: is God unjust? I could have answered him, by God's help, if he had given me time; but he went on, and said, Bacon had much sagacity, but no sincerity; much force, but no firmness. It is painful to discover in him the reviler of Raleigh, the last relic of heroism in the dastardly court of James: it is horrible to hear him the apologist of a patron's disgrace and death; the patron's whose friendly hand had raised him to the first steps of the highest station. Sir, answered I, his political conduct is not the question before us. It may, however, said he, enlighten us in regard to his candour, and induce us to ask ourselves whether, in matters of religion, he delivered his thoughts exactly, and whether he may not have conformed his expression of them to the opinions of his master. BARROW. I hope you dropt the discussion after this. NEWTON. No; I cried resolutely, Sir, when I am better prepared for it, I may have something to say with you on your very irreverent expressions. BARROW. Mr. Newton, do not be ruffled. Bacon spoke figuratively; so did Moses, to whom the allusion was made. Let the matter rest, my dear friend. NEWTON. I told him plainly he was unfair; he was no friend to Bacon. He smiled at me and continued, My good Newton, I am as ready to be told when I am unfair, as you are to have your watch set right when it goes amiss. You say I am no friend to Bacon; and in truth, after the experience he left us in the Earl of Essex, he is not precisely the man to place one's friendship on. Yet surely no folly is greater than hatred of those we never saw, and from whom we can have received no injury. Often do I wonder when I hear violent declamations against theories and opinions; which declamations I think are as ill directed, as they would be against currents of air or water courses. We may keep out of their way if we will. I estimate the genius of Bacon as highly as perhaps you do. In this very Essay |