doctrine of Returns or ricorsi [Footnote: Bodin's conversiones.] is
denounced by Bacon as the greatest obstacle to the advancement of
knowledge, creating, as it does, diffidence or despair. He does not
formally refute it, but he marshals the reasons for an optimistic
view, and these reasons supply the disproof The facts on which the
fatalistic doctrine of Returns is based can be explained without
resorting to any mysterious law. [Footnote: Nov. Org. i. 92 sqq.]
Progress has not been steady or continuous on account of the
prejudices and errors which hindered men from setting to work in the
right way. The difficulties in advancing did not arise from things
which are not in our power; they were due to the human
understanding, which wasted time and labour on improper objects. "In
proportion as the errors which have been committed impeded the past,
so do they afford reason to hope for the future."

4.

But will the new period of advance, which Bacon expected and strove
to secure, be of indefinite duration? He does not consider the
question. His view that he lived in the old age of the world implies
that he did not anticipate a vast tract of time before the end of
mankind's career on earth. And an orthodox Christian of that time
could hardly be expected to predict. The impression we get is that,
in his sanguine enthusiasm, he imagined that a "prudent
interrogation" of nature could extort all her secrets in a few
generations. As a reformer he was so engaged in the immediate
prospect of results that his imagination did not turn to the
possibilities of a remoter future, though these would logically
follow from his recognition of "the inseparable propriety of time
which is ever more and more to disclose truth." He hopes everything