Roger Bacon did more practical experimenting than the Elizabethan sage; and the latter’s famous “idols” are strongly suggestive of the former’s “Four Sources of Human Ignorance.”  Although Bacon did not make any of the scientific discoveries at which he aimed, yet the whole spirit of his work, especially of the Organum, has strongly influenced science in the direction of accurate observation and of carefully testing every theory by practical experiment.  “He that regardeth the clouds shall not sow,” said a wise writer of old; and Bacon turned men’s thoughts from the heavens above, with which they had been too busy, to the earth beneath, which they had too much neglected.  In an age when men were busy with romance and philosophy, he insisted that the first object of education is to make a man familiar with his natural environment; from books he turned to men, from theory to fact, from philosophy to nature,—­ and that is perhaps his greatest contribution to life and literature.  Like Moses upon Pisgah, he stood high enough above his fellows to look out over a promised land, which his people would inherit, but into which he himself might never enter.

RICHARD HOOKER (1554?-1600) In strong contrast with Bacon is Richard Hooker, one of the greatest prose writers of the Elizabethan Age.  One must read the story of his life, an obscure and lowly life animated by a great spirit, as told by Izaak Walton, to appreciate the full force of this contrast.  Bacon took all knowledge for his province, but mastered no single part of it.  Hooker, taking a single theme, the law and practice of the English Church, so handled it that no scholar even of the present day would dream of superseding it or of building upon any other foundation than that which Hooker laid down.  His one great work is The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,[158] a theological and argumentative book; but, entirely apart from its subject, it will be read wherever men desire to hear the power and stateliness of the English language.  Here is a single sentence, remarkable not only for its perfect form but also for its expression of the reverence for law which lies at the heart of Anglo-Saxon civilization: 

Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.