VICTIM OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT.

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 3, 3 July 1926, Page 20

VICTIM OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT.

On 9th April, 1626, there passed away one whom Dean Church finely characterises as "tho brightest, richest, largest mind but one, in the age which had seen Shakespeare and his fellows." Francis Bacon died a victim of a scientific experiment, having caught cold while stuffing a fowl with snow in order to observe its effects on the preservation of flesh, writes Mr. W. Forbes Gray in the "Scotsman." Bacon's exalted position in English literature is due to those jncomparable "Essays," in which one of the wisest of Englishmen (despite the fact that his career was a moral tragedy) garners the lessons of his study of mankind. A master' of aphoristic prose, probably no English author, with the exception of Shakespeare, has uttered so many precious truths. Yet Bacon was much more than a man of letters. Ho has won universal recognition as the first person to give an impetus to scientific method, tho first who taught that human knowledge cannot be permanently advanced without a systematic and wide examination of the available facts. In the "Now Atlantis" he argues that tho application of material resources, by which lie means scientific research, is one of the surest means ifor the achievement of liational glory and well-being.

Bacon laid the foundations of modern science, though others reared tho superstructure. Cowloy aptly compared him with Moses on Pisgah, surveying the promised land; the Joshua who took possession was Newton. "For my name and memory," Bacon wrote in his will, "I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages."- His trust has not been misplaced;; the "next ages" will never cease to respect the intellectual greatness of Francis Bacon. '