the same ground, and in one essential point--which might almost be
taken as the test of mental progress at this period--Bruno and
Campanella have outstripped him. For him Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo worked in vain; he obstinately adhered to the old geocentric
system.

It must also be remembered that the principle which he laid down in
his ambitious programme for the reform of science--that experiment
is the key for discovering the secrets of nature--was not a new
revelation. We need not dwell on the fact that he had been
anticipated by Roger Bacon; for the ideas of that wonderful thinker
had fallen dead in an age which was not ripe for them. But the
direct interrogation of nature was already recognised both in
practice and in theory in the sixteenth century. What Bacon did was
to insist upon the principle more strongly and explicitly, and to
formulate it more precisely. He clarified and explained the
progressive ideas which inspired the scientific thought of the last
period of the European Renaissance, from which he cannot, I think,
be dissociated.

But in clearing up and defining these progressive ideas, he made a
contribution to the development of human thought which had far-
reaching importance and has a special significance for our present
subject. In the hopes of a steady increase of knowledge, based on
the application of new methods, he had been anticipated by Roger
Bacon, and further back by Seneca. But with Francis Bacon this idea
of the augmentation of knowledge has an entirely new value. For
Seneca the exploration of nature was a means of escaping from the
sordid miseries of life. For the friar of Oxford the principal use
of increasing knowledge was to prepare for the coming of Antichrist.