But what is literature?  It is creative mind, addressing itself in worthy expression to the common receptive mind of mankind.  Its note is universality, as distinguished from all that is technical, limited, and narrow.  Thought whose interest is as broad as humanity, suitably clothed in the language of real life, and thus fitted for access to the general intelligence, constitutes true literature, to the exclusion of that which, by its nature or by its expression, appeals only to a special class or school.  The ‘Opus Anglicanum’ of Duns Scotus, Newton’s ‘Principia,’ Lavoisier’s treatise ‘Sur la Combustion,’ Kant’s ’Kritik der Reinen Vernunft’ (Critique of Pure Reason), each made an epoch in some vast domain of knowledge or belief; but none of them is literature.  Yet the thoughts they, through a limited and specially trained class of students, introduced to the world, were gradually taken up into the common stock of mankind, and found their broad, effective, complete expression in the literature of after generations.  If we apply this test to Bacon’s life work, we shall find sufficient justification for honoring him above all special workers in narrower fields, as next to Shakespeare the greatest name in the greatest period of English literature.

It was not as an experimenter, investigator, or technical teacher, but as a thinker and a writer, that he rendered his great service to the world.  This consisted essentially in the contribution of two magnificent ideas to the common stock of thought:  the idea of the utility of science, as able to subjugate the forces of nature to the use of man; and the idea of continued and boundless progress in the comfort and happiness of the individual life, and in the order and dignity of human society.  It has been shown how, from early manhood, he was inspired by the conception of infinite resources in the material world, for the discovery and employment of which the human mind is adapted.  He never wearied of pointing out the imperfection and fruitlessness of the methods of inquiry and of invention hitherto in use, and the splendid results which could be rapidly attained if a combined and systematic effort were made to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge.  This led him directly to the conception of an improved and advancing civilization; to the utterance, in a thousand varied, impressive, and fascinating forms, of that idea of human progress which is the inspiration, the characteristic, and the hope of the modern world.  Bacon was the first of men to grasp these ideas in all their comprehensiveness as feasible purposes, as practical aims; to teach the development of them as the supreme duty and ambition of his contemporaries, and to look forward instead of behind him for the Golden Age.  Enforcing and applying these thoughts with a wealth of learning, a keenness of wit, a soundness of judgment, and a suggestiveness of illustration unequaled by any writer before him, he became the greatest literary power of modern times to stimulate minds in every department of life to their noblest efforts and their worthiest achievements.