Cardan and Paracelsus were destroyers and
mystics only; they destroyed on the earth that they might build in the
air: Lord Bacon united both characters in the philosopher. He looked
abroad into the regions of the unknown, whence all knowledge comes; he
called wonder the seed of knowledge; but he would build nowhere but on
the earth--on the firm land of ascertained truth. That which kept him
right was his practical humanity. It was for the sake of delivering men
from the ills of life, by discovering the laws of the elements amidst
which that life must be led, that he laboured and thought. This object
kept him true, made him able to discover the very laws of discovery;
brought him so far into _rapport_ with the heart of nature herself,
that, like a physical prophet, his seeing could outspeed his knowing,
and behold a law--dimly, it is true, but yet behold it--long before his
intellect, which had to build bridges and find straw to make the bricks,
could dare to affirm its approach to the same conclusion. Truth to
humanity made him true to fact; and truth to fact made him true in
theory.
It was in this spirit of devotion to his kind that he said, "Therefore
here is the deficience which I find, that physicians have not .
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