English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth.

  • James Seth
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English philosophers and schools of philosophy / by James Seth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    38/392 (page 22)
    conceived his vocation to lie no less in the sphere of statesmanship than in that of philosophy. It would have been inconsistent with his practical and utilitarian esti¬ mate of knowledge to depreciate the work of the states¬ man, as he conceived it. If he regarded himself, in his study of nature, as the servant of mankind, as the dis¬ coverer of Nature’s laws that he might subdue her activi¬ ties to the uses of mankind and ‘ the relief of man’s estate,’ in his political activity he no less regarded himself as the servant of his country, discovering the path of her true and permanent well-being, and persuading, if he might, the king and parliament to follow that path. As Nichol says, ‘There is no more flagrant freak of criti¬ cism than to treat his public life as that of one playing truant from his Academy or Porch. However he may have deceived himself, half of Bacon’s heart was set on politics.’1 ‘ His heart was as much set on establishing on a basis of slowly broadening rights the foundations of the Greater Britain of his dreams as on reading the riddles of the earth and sky.’2 There is no warrant for ascribing his interest in politics to the gratification of selfish ambi¬ tion ; his aim was as essentially disinterested in the political as in the intellectual life : nor was his ability less conspicuous in the one case than in the other. 4 Those abilities,’ says William Rawley, ‘which go single in other men . . . were all conjoined and met in him.’ In him theoretic insight and practical sagacity were singu¬ larly combined ; so far as the union of knowledge with ability to rule is concerned, he is the most remarkable case, at least in English history, of the realisation of Plato’s dream of the philosopher-statesman. He realises at the same time his own ideal of the true philosopher of the modern type, who differs from his ancient and mediaeval prototypes in being not a recluse, whether of the academic or of the monastic sort, but a man of affairs, an active citizen. Nor is there historic warrant for the undiscriminating