第59章

Without the working out of the empirical sciences on their own account, Philosophy could not have reached further than with the ancients. The whole of the Idea in itself is science as perfected and complete; but the other side is the beginning, the process of its origination. This process of the origination of science is different from its process in itself when it is complete, just as is the process of the history of Philosophy and that of Philosophy itself. In every science principles are commenced with; at the first these are the results of the particular, but if the science is completed they are made the beginning. The case is similar with Philosophy; the working out of the empirical side has really become the conditioning of the Idea, so that this last may reach its full development and determination. For instance, in order that the history of the Philosophy of modern times may exist, we must have a history of Philosophy in general, the process of Philosophy during so many thousand years; mind must have followed this long, road in order that the Philosophy may be produced. In consciousness it then adopts the attitude of having cut away the bridge from behind it; it appears to be free to launch forth in its other only, and to develop without resistance in this medium; but it is another matter to attain to this ether and to development in it. We must not overlook the fact that Philosophy would not have come into existence without this process, for mind is essentially a working upon something different.

1. Bacon’s fame rests on two works. In the first place, he has the merit of having in his work De augmentis scientiarum presented to us a systematic encyclopedia of the sciences, an outline which must undoubtedly have caused a sensation amongst his contemporaries. It is important to set before men’s eyes a well arranged picture such as this of the whole, when that whole has not been grasped in thought. This encyclopedia gives a general classification of the sciences; the principles of the classification are regulated in accordance with the differences in the intellectual capacities. Bacon thus divides human learning according to the faculties of memory, imagination, and reason, for he distinguishes what pertains (1) to memory; (2) to imagination; (3) to reason.

Under memory he considered history; under imagination, poetry, and art; and finally, under reason, philosophy. (3) According to his favourite method of division these again are further divided, since he brings all else under these same heads; this is, however, unsatisfactory. To history belong the works of God - sacred, prophetic, ecclesiastical history; the works of men -civil and literary history; and likewise the works of nature, and so on. (4) He goes through these topics after the manner of his time, a main characteristic of which is that anything can be made plausible through examples, e.g., from the Bible. Thus, in treating of Cosmetica, he says in regard to paint that “He is surprised that this depraved custom of painting has been by the penal laws both ecclesiastical and civil so long overlooked. In the Bible we read indeed of Jezebel that she painted her face; but nothing of the kind is said of Esther or Judith.” (5) If kings, popes, etc., are being discussed, such examples as those of Ahab and Solomon must be brought forward. As formerly in civil laws - those respecting marriage, for instance - the Jewish forms held good, in Philosophy, too, the same are still to be found. In this work theology likewise appears as also magic; there is contained in it a comprehensive system of knowledge and of the sciences.

The arrangement of the sciences is the least significant part of the work De augmentis scientiarum. It was by its criticism that its value was established and its effect produced, as also by the number of instructive remarks contained in it; all this was at that time lacking in the particular varieties of learning and modes of discipline, especially in as far as the methods hitherto adopted were faulty, and unsuitable to the ends in view: in them the Aristotelian conceptions of the schools were spun out by the understanding as though they were realities. As it was with the Schoolmen and with the ancients, this classification is still the mode adopted in the sciences, in which the nature of knowledge is unknown. In them the idea of the science is advanced beforehand, and to this idea a principle foreign to it is added, as a basis of division, just as here is added the distinction between memory, imagination and reason. The true method of division is found in the self-division of the Notion, its separating itself from itself. In knowledge the moment of self-consciousness is undoubtedly found, and the real self-consciousness has in it the moments of memory, imagination and reason. But this division is certainly not taken from the Notion of self-consciousness, but from experience, in which self-consciousness finds itself possessed of these capacities.