consciousness after death. First, in the Essay "Of Atheism":

They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the raising of human nature.1 The second comes from the Advancement of Learning:

So certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal frame of nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls except) will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust.

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We come now to Bacon's ideas about the sensible or produced soul.2 He held that this soul is wholly physical, resolved, like the body, at the death of the body, into the elements (the “quantum of nature"). It is “ in brutes the principal soul, the body of the brute being its instrument; whereas in man it is itself only the instrument of the rational soul, and may be more fitly termed not soul, but spirit." This "spirit" was, in his view, "corporal and material substance," the nature and operations of which are fully discussed in the Historia Vitae et Mortis,3 the strangest of all Bacon's compositions. Its purpose is to suggest means for the prolongation of human life, which he regarded as the "noblest" of the functions of medicine. This is to be effected by physical methods, which are imagined as acting on the "spirits." Spirits" are in "all tangible bodies," and in "animate bodies" there are two kinds, "lifeless spirits, such as are in bodies inanimate, and in addition to them a living spirit." "There are diffused in the substance of every part of the human body, as the flesh, bones, membranes, organs and the like, during lifetime, spirits of the same

1 Compare also the Essay "Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature," where the writer says that without the habit of Goodness ("Philanthropia ") "man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin." 2 De Augmentis (trans. E. and S.), bk. iv. 3 (reference at p. 111).

3 History of Life and Death (trans. E. and S.), Works, v. pp. 224, 268, 321 sq.

kind as those which exist in the same things, flesh, bones, membranes and the rest, when separated and dead; such likewise as remain in the corpse. But the living spirit, though it governs them and has some agreement with them, is very different from them, being integral and selfsubsisting." "The lifeless spirits are nearly of the same substance as the air; the vital spirits more akin to the substance of flame." "The spirit has two desires; one of multiplying itself, the other of going forth and congregating with its connaturals." "This rule is understood

of the lifeless spirits. For with regard to the second desire, the vital spirit has a special abhorrence of leaving the body, seeing it has no connaturals near at hand. It may perhaps rush to extremities of the body, to meet something that it loves, but as I said before, it is loth to go forth. But the lifeless spirits, on the other hand, are possessed by both these desires. For as to the former, every spirit seated amongst the grosser parts dwells unhappily, and being in such solitude, where it finds nothing like itself, it the more strives to make and create something similar; and to increase its quantity, it works hard to multiply itself, and prey upon the volatile part of the grosser bodies." "The living spirit perishes immediately when it is deprived either of motion, or of refrigeration or of aliment." "The fabric of the parts [of the body] is the organ of the spirit, as the spirit is the organ of the reasonable soul, which is incorporeal and divine."

The theory is also stated in the Novum Organum1: "Every tangible that we are acquainted with contains an invisible and intangible spirit, which it wraps and clothes as with a garment. Hence that three-fold source, so potent and wonderful, of the process of the spirit in a tangible body. For the spirit in a tangible substance, if discharged, contracts bodies and dries them up; if detained, softens and melts them 2; if neither wholly discharged nor wholly detained, gives them shape, produces 1 Bk. ii. Aph. 40 (trans. E. and S.), Works, iv. 195. 2 As in iron heated.

limbs, assimilates, digests, ejects, organises and the like.1 And all these processes are made manifest to the sense by conspicuous effects." 2

In Rawley's Life of Bacon there is an interesting personal note bearing on the subject: "And for physic, he did indeed live physically, but not miserably; for he took only a maceration of rhubarb, infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the space of half an hour, once in six or seven days, immediately before his meal (whether dinner or supper), that it might dry the body less; which (as he said) did carry away frequently the grosser humours of the body, and not diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as sweating doth."

Still more interesting is the following report noted by Aubrey (Brief Lives), which presumably, from the words underlined, completely puzzled him: "In April, and the spring time, his lordship would, when it rayned, take his coach (open) to receive the benefit of irrigation, which he was wont to say was very wholesome because of the nitre in the air and the universall spirit of the world." Compare with this the Essay on "Proserpine, or Spirit" (Wisdom of the Ancients).

In the Natural History (written in English) occurs a further statement on the subject, which is noteworthy as proving (if further proof were needed) that Bacon identified the "soul" (apart from the divine particle, which he excludes from the inquiry) with these "spirits." The opening words of the passage are also a good example of Bacon's insight when not misled by his fancy. "The knowledge of man (hitherto) hath been determined by the view or sight; so that whatsoever is invisible, either in respect of the fineness of the body itself, or the smallness of the parts, or of the subtlety of the motion, is little inquired. And yet these be the things that

The spirit is conceived as "making trials and experiments within its prison house," and when it "meets with tangible parts that are obedient and ready to follow," "whithersoever the spirit leads they go along with it, and then ensues the forming of an organic body, and the development of organic parts, and all the other vital actions as well in vegetable as in animal substances." 2 e.g. diminution of weight.

govern nature principally; and without which you cannot make any true analysis and indication of the proceedings of nature. The spirits or pneumaticals, that are in all tangible bodies, are scarce known. Sometimes they take them for vacuum, whereas they are the most active of bodies. Sometimes they take them for air . . . sometimes they will have them to be the virtues and qualities of the tangible parts which they see; whereas they are things by themselves. And then, when they come to plants and living creatures, they call them souls. And such superficial speculations they have. . . . Neither is this a question of words, but infinitely material in nature. For spirits are nothing else but a natural body, rarified to a proportion, and included in the tangible parts of bodies, as in an integument. And they be no less differing one from the other than the dense or tangible parts; and they are in all tangible bodies whatsoever, more or less; and they are never (almost) at rest; and from them and their motions principally proceed arefaction, colliquation, concoction, maturation, putrefaction, vivification, and most of the effects of nature; for, as we have figured them in our Sapientia Veterum1 in the fable of Proserpina, you shall in the infernal regiment hear little doings of Pluto, but most of Proserpina: for tangible parts in bodies are stupid things; and the spirits do (in effect) all" (i. 98).2

The spiritus vitalis ("living spirit") is regarded as "preying upon the body," "like a subtle flame," and when this process can no longer be arrested, by "alimentation" and other means described, death ensues. With this idea, however, is inextricably mixed up the idea of the "desire" of "spirit" to escape from confinement in gross bodies. The distinction between "lifeless spirits" and "the living spirit" is, of course, an arbitrary one, and the expedient of the "living spirit" (which appears to be adopted to escape from logical difficulties) begs the question. The ideas are in some respects very primitive. While insisting on the one hand that the "spirits" are Proserpine, or Spirit. Explained of the 2 Spedding, Works, ii. 380.

1 Wisdom of the Ancients: spirit included in natural bodies."

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nothing but material substances, the writer attributes to them desires and feelings. Professor Fowler 2 observes that in these ideas there are "curious survivals of a primitive fetichistic era, when men literally believed that every object around them was animated or possessed by a soul or agent." But since this was written science has been changing its views as to the nature of matter, and the primitive man does not now appear in so foolish a light as he did. Bacon's reasoning may often be faulty, and his ideas fantastic even in relation to the best thought of his age, but his imagination enabled him to make guesses which seem to come surprisingly near the truth as subsequently ascertained by experiment.

Returning to the chapter " De anima” (De Augm. iv. 3),3 we find that all the qualities of the mind are attributed to the sensible soul, or "spirits." The wording might be regarded as ambiguous, but, for reasons already given, this is probably intentional, and, read with the passages given above, there can be no question that the passage is not confined in any particular to the "rational soul."

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"The faculties of the soul are well known: understanding, reason, imagination, memory, appetite, will, in short all with which the logical and ethical sciences deal. But in the doctrine concerning the soul the origins of these faculties ought to be handled, and that physically, as they are innate and inherent in the soul; the uses only and objects of them being deputed to those other arts."

What, then, under this scheme is the function in the individual of the rational soul (spiraculum)? On this

1 Another example of this occurs in the Natural History: "Putrefaction is the work of the spirits of bodies, which ever are unquiet to get forth and congregate with the air, and to enjoy the sunbeams." Works, ii. 451. 2 Introduction to the Novum Organum (1888), to which the reader is referred. 3 See page 111 for the reference.

4 In this Bacon is following Aristotle; see p. 109 above and footnote. 5 "Will" in Baconian terminology means the natural passions or inclinations, and is frequently used, more particularly of sexual desire, in opposition to "wit," the intellectual and rational faculty, which is regarded as the source of self-control.

6 Higher up the writer says: "For of what service are such terms as ultimate act, form of the body, and such toys of logic, to the doctrine concerning the substance of the soul?"