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It is only to be written by the mind or soul, and that is why I strive so much to find what I have called the alchemy of nature. Let us not be too entirely mechanical, Baconian, and experimental only; let us let the soul hope and dream and float on these oceans of accumulated facts, and feel still greater aspiration than it has ever known since first a flint was chipped before the glaciers.
Having firmly established every point in my argument according to the Baconian method of investigation, I felt it my duty to enlighten my scholars; and in the course of my last lecture I announced the result of my investigations.
All the problems of woodland cookery are best saved by the baconian method. And when we say of one escaping great disaster that he has "saved his bacon," we say that the physical basis and the quintessential comfort of his life are still untouched and secure.
That is to say, the Atkinson Letters state some of the difficulties in the way of the explanations of life and motion hitherto received as satisfactory; they insist upon approaching the facts exclusively by the positive, Baconian, or inductive method; and then they hurry to an explanation of their own, which may be as plausible as that which they intend it to replace, but which they leave equally without ordered proof and strict verification.
But enough has been quoted to show that Sydney Smith, so far as he was in any sense concerned with philosophy, was a sworn foe to mysticism and ideality, and a worshipper of Baconian common-sense even in the sphere of mind and soul. He was never tired of poking fun at his philosophical friends in Edinburgh.
It was, at all events, right or wrong, the method I adopted to get at such results as I proceed to make public. I declined to be scared from the study either by Bogey or my esteemed friend Mrs. Grundy, but went at it just in the calm Baconian inductive method in which I should have commenced any other study or pursuit.
The serenity of these gatherings, whether at Mr. Ashbee's or at Mr. Arbuthnot's, was never ruffled unless somebody happened to introduce politics or the Shakespere-Bacon Question. Arbuthnot the Liberal was content to strike out with his back against the wall, so to speak, when attacked by the Conservative Burton, Ashbee and Payne; but Arbuthnot the Baconian frequently took the offensive.
Rather, we think, the true intellectual method combining both Baconian induction and Aristotelian deduction yet waits to realize some of the best of the application and work for which its joint originators and their co-workers have been preparing it; and that perhaps one of the highest consummations of this one method of thought may yet appear in the carrying forward, with more of certainty, pleasure, and success in their attaining of knowledge, the lisping philosophers of our school-rooms and our firesides.
What they do, then, is not to go and learn something about the subject, which one would naturally think the best way of fairly dealing with it; but they abuse the originator of the view they question, in a general manner, and wind up by saying that, "After all, you know, the principles and method of this author are totally opposed to the canons of the Baconian philosophy."
Well, the first job is breakfast, an' after breakfast we'll get Old Jubilee round by the footbridge an' make shift to borrow a cart down at Ibbetson's, for the scenery. You didn' forget the bacon?" Mr. Mortimer unwrapped a parcel of greasy paper and exhibited six slices. "A Baconian O, Shakespeare, forgive!"
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