disputations, into a higher and larger light, and bringing to bear on it great principles and the results of the best human wisdom and experience, expressed in weighty and pregnant maxims; his weakness in forgetting, as, in spite of his philosophy, he so often did, that the grandest major premises need well-proved and ascertained minors, and that the enunciation of a principle is not the same thing as the application of it.  Doubtless there is truth in his closing words; but each party would have made the comment that what he had to prove, and had not proved, was that by following his counsel they would “love the whole world better than a part.”

“Let them not fear ... the fond calumny of neutrality; but let them know that is true which is said by a wise man, that neuters in contentions are either better or worse than either side.  These things have I in all sincerity and simplicity set down touching the controversies which now trouble the Church of England; and that without all art and insinuation, and therefore not like to be grateful to either part.  Notwithstanding, I trust what has been said shall find a correspondence in their minds which are not embarked in partiality, and which love the whole letter than a part”

Up to this time, though Bacon had showed himself capable of taking a broad and calm view of questions which it was the fashion among good men, and men who were in possession of the popular ear, to treat with narrowness and heat, there was nothing to disclose his deeper thoughts—­nothing foreshadowed the purpose which was to fill his life.  He had, indeed, at the age of twenty-five, written a “youthful” philosophical essay, to which he gave the pompous title “Temporis Partus Maximus,” “the Greatest Birth of Time.”  But he was thirty-one when we first find an indication of the great idea and the great projects which were to make his name famous.  This indication is contained in an earnest appeal to Lord Burghley for some help which should not be illusory.  Its words are distinct and far-reaching, and they are the first words from him which tell us what was in his heart.  The letter has the interest to us of the first announcement of a promise which, to ordinary minds, must have appeared visionary and extravagant, but which was so splendidly fulfilled; the first distant sight of that sea of knowledge which henceforth was opened to mankind, but on which no man, as he thought, had yet entered.  It contains the famous avowal—­“I have taken all knowledge to be my province”—­made in the confidence born of long and silent meditations and questionings, but made in a simple good faith which is as far as possible from vain boastfulness.