Bampton Lectures

“ Graduating B.A. in 1788, he was elected a fellow of All Souls College, took holy orders, and proceeded M.A. in 1792 (B.D. in 1802, and D.D. in 1807) . In 1801 he was proctor in the university, and in 1802 he preached the Bampton lectures, his subject being ‘Religious Enthusiasm.’ The success attending these sermons, which were published next year, brought him to the notice of the king, who appointed him sub-preceptor to Princess Charlotte of Wales. ”

“ An agitation against him was immediately set on foot by the high church and tory party, who stated that his Bampton lectures, the subject of which was 'The Scholastic Philosophy considered in its relations to Christian Theology,' were unorthodox, and persuaded the board of heads to condemn them. ”

“ In 1831 he preached the Bampton lectures, taking for his subject ' The Popular Evidence of Christianity.' He was appointed a select preacher to the university in 1832, and a public examiner in 1832-3. ”

“ He appeared to be one of those imperfectly educated, or imperfectly trained, men who are so numerous in the world, men who posses great strength in some directions, but in others are like children; and I think we often receive more practical and useful lessons from the conduct and failings of such men than we are ever likely to do from whole libraries of Johnsonian moralities, with Bampton and Hulsean Lectures to boot. ”

“ He married in 1830 Emmy, countess Schlippenbach, lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Cumberland; he had seven children, including George Edward Jelf, canon of Rochester, Sir Arthur Richard Jelf, Q.C., and Colonel R. H. Jelf, R.E. Besides his Bampton lectures Jelf published a volume of ‘Sermons Doctrinal and Practical,’ 8vo, London, 1835 ”

“ A very clever man, a Bampton lecturer, evidently writing with good and upright intention, sends me a lecture in which he lays down the qualities he thinks necessary to make theological study fruitful. ”

“ In 1892 he was chosen Bampton lecturer at Oxford, taking as his subject 'Some Lights of Science on Faith.' He was Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge for 1894, and gave a masterly review of the 'Ecclesiastical Expansion of England in the Growth of the Anglican Communion.' From 1895 to 1900 he held the rectory of St. ”

“ The last century has seen the birth and growth of a new science—the Science of Historical Criticism.... The whole world of profane history has been revolutionised....
If these utterances were true when they fell from the lips of a Bampton lecturer in 1859, with how much greater force do they appeal to us now, when the immense labours of the generation now passing away constitute one vast illustration of the power and fruitfulness of scientific methods of investigation in history, no less than in all other departments of knowledge. ”

“ Because Bacon gave expression to the tendency, and men require to have a leader and originator for any particular manner of thinking, he is credited with having given to knowledge this impulse towards experimental philosophy generally. But many cultured men have spoken and thought regarding what concerns and interests mankind, regarding state affairs, mind, heart, external nature, &c., in accordance with experience and in accordance with a cultured knowledge of the world. ”

“ In 1790, when he took holy orders, he was elected to a fellowship at Oriel College, and remained there until 1796. He was appointed Bampton lecturer in 1800, and select preacher in 1804 and 1811. From 1796, when he married, to 1824 he was one of the vicars of Bampton, and rector of Lillingstone Lovel in Oxfordshire. ”

“ Not without reason, therefore, did Lord Bacon call the experimental method a questioning of nature. The art consists in so putting our questions that they may not remain unanswered without a breach of etiquette. ”

“ There was considerable applause from this eminent assembly upon the appearance of Professor von Baumgarten and his subject upon the platform. The lecturer, in a few well-chosen words, explained what his views were, and how he proposed to test them. "I hold," he said, "that when a person is under the influence of mesmerism, his spirit is for the time released from his body, and I challenge any one to put forward any other hypothesis which will account for the fact of clairvoyance. ”

“ To think of our distress,
When we for hopes of honour lose
Our certain happiness;
All those designs are but to prove
Ourselves more worthy of your love.
With a fa, &c.
11 And now we've told you all our loves,
And likewise all our fears,
In hopes this declaration moves
Some pity from your tears;
Let's hear of no inconstancy,
We have too much of that at sea.
With a fa, la, la, la, la.
JOHN PHILIPS. Bampton in Oxfordshire was the birthplace of this poet. He was born on the 30th of December 1676. His father, Dr Stephen Philips, was archdeacon of Salop, as well as minister of Bampton. ”

“ The spirit of the philosophy of Bacon is to take experience as the true and only source of knowledge, and then to regulate the thought concerning it. Knowledge from experience stands in opposition to knowledge arising from the speculative Notion, and the opposition is apprehended in so acute a manner that the knowledge proceeding from the Notion is ashamed of the knowledge from experience, just as this again takes up a position of antagonism to the knowledge through the Notion. ”

“ To Roger Bacon, that remarkable mind who in the middle of the thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the schoolmen's conception of reasoning appeared only an obstacle to truth. He saw that experience alone teaches anything—a proposition which to us seems easy to understand, because a distinct conception of experience has been handed down to us from former generations ”

“ Bacon had the advantage of dealing with a subject which he had studied more closely and experimentally than he did physical science. To understand human nature and how to manage it was his constant endeavour, though the motive for which he studied it and sought advancement was leisure, and opportunity for scientific research. The Essays are the fullest and finest expression of the practical wisdom he had acquired from study, experience, and meditation. Profound wisdom, and practical shrewdness amounting almost to cunning, are mingled in them with satire and rich meditative eloquence. ”

“ Of all the sciences which have puzzled the sons of men, none had such an attraction for the learned Professor von Baumgarten as those which relate to psychology and the ill-defined relations between mind and matter. A celebrated anatomist, a profound chemist, and one of the first physiologists in Europe, it was a relief for him to turn from these subjects and bring his varied knowledge to bear upon the study of the soul and the mysterious relationship of spirits. ”

“ Since Bacon has ever been esteemed as the man who directed knowledge to its true source, to experience, he is, in fact, the special leader and representative of what is in England called Philosophy, and beyond which the English have not yet advanced. For they appear to constitute that people in Europe which, limited to the understanding of actuality, is destined, like the class of shopkeepers and workmen in the State, to live always immersed in matter, and to have actuality but not reason as object. ”

“ Such are the general causes of the errors that infest the human mind; by their exposure the way is cleared for the introduction of the new method. The nature of this method cannot be understood until it is exactly seen to what it is to be applied. What idea had Bacon of science, and how is his method connected with it? Now, the science [57] which was specially and invariably contemplated by him was Natural Philosophy, the great mother of all the sciences; it was to him the type of scientific knowledge, and its method was the method of all true science. ”

“ Dugald Stewart, in a letter to Constable, the 15th of November 1812, though he declines to engage to execute any of his own suggestions, recommends that four discourses should “stand in front,” forming “a general map of the various departments of human knowledge,” similar to “the excellent discourse prefixed by D’Alembert to the French Encyclopédie,” together with historical sketches of the progress since Bacon’s time of modern discoveries in metaphysical, moral and political philosophy, in mathematics and physics, in chemistry, and in zoology, botany and mineralogy. ”

“ Confident, then, that my own experience may be safely trusted, I shall follow it cheerfully, whether it lead me in the path which speculation has trodden, or across it. Bacon lays it down as a principle in philosophy, that man is ignorant of every thing antecedent to observation, and that experience is at the bottom of all our knowledge. ”

“ Physical science, if there was anything deserving that name, was cultivated, not by experiment in the true Aristotelian way, but by discussion and by arguments deduced from premises resting on authority or custom. Everywhere there was a show of knowledge covering and concealing fundamental ignorance. Bacon, accordingly, who knew what true science was, and who had glimpses of a scientific organon or method, withdrew from the usual scholastic routine, and devoted himself to languages and experimental researches. ”

“ Let Bacon speak for himself, in his editor's English:
"But the course I propose for the discovery of sciences is such as leaves but little to the acuteness and strength of wits, but places all wits and understandings nearly on a level. For, as in the drawing of a straight line or a perfect circle, much depends on the steadiness and practice of the hand, if it be done by aim of hand only, but if with the aid of rule or compass little or nothing, so it is exactly with my plan.... For my way of discovering sciences goes far to level men's wits, and leaves but little to individual excellence ”

“ I quitted Magdalen College within three months, sent my books to Lincoln, and established myself there in a mode of life very much according with my former collegiate habits. Before I left Oxford, I acquainted the president of my college with my wish to be appointed to preach the Bampton lecture; he acquiesced, and desired me to write him word when I should be prepared, that he might propose [Pg 43] me to the heads of houses, with whom rests the nomination of the lecturer. This institution is so well known, that no account of it here is necessary. ”

“ Was it that his eagerness to acquire the power of producing for man's benefit effects of practical importance to human life, rendering him impatient of pursuing that end by a circuitous route, made even him, the champion of experiment, prefer the direct mode, though one of mere observation, to the indirect, in which alone experiment was possible? Or had even Bacon not entirely cleared his mind from the notion of the ancients, that "rerum cognoscere causas" was the sole object of philosophy, and that to inquire into the effects of things belonged to servile and mechanical arts? ”

“ Now what the sciences stand in need of is a form of induction which shall analyse experience and take it to pieces, and by a due process of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion. And if that ordinary mode of judgment practised by the logicians was so laborious, and found exercise for such great wits, how much more labour must we be prepared to bestow upon this other, which is extracted not merely out of the depths of the mind, but out of the very bowels of nature. ”

“ In every new and rather delicate experiment, although to us it may appear sure and satisfactory, we yet publish the method we employed, that, by the discovery of every attendant circumstance, men may perceive the possibly latent and inherent errors, and be roused to proofs of a more certain and exact nature, if such there be. ”

“ The general object of Lord Bacon's philosophy, writes Bruce, an Edinburgh professor of logic of the last century, is to connect the reasoning powers of man with experiments for the improvement of natural knowledge. ”

“ The progress of society has rendered knowledge far more various in its kinds than it used to be; and to meet this variety in the tastes and inclinations of those who come to us for instruction, we have, besides the regular lectures to which all must attend, other sources of information from whence the students may acquire sound and varied knowledge in the numerous lectures on chemistry, geology, botany, history, &c. It is at present a matter of option with the student, which, and how many of these courses he shall attend, and such it should still remain. ”

“ Nay, some have only proposed to themselves a few paltry tasks, and think it a great thing if they can work out one single discovery, a plan no less beggarly than unskilful. For no one examines thoroughly or successfully the nature of any thing in the thing itself, but after a laborious variety of experiments, instead of pausing there, they set out upon some further inquiry. And we must by no means omit observing, that all the industry displayed in experiment, has, from the very first, caught with a too hasty and intemperate zeal at some determined effect ”

“ For certainty there must be somewhat left to practice; but how much is worthy the inquiry? We see remote and superficial generalities do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men; and are no more aiding to practice than an Ortelius’ universal map is to direct the way between London and York. ”

“ This letter of Roger Bacon contains every idea that the modern scientists contend for as significant in education. It counsels observation, not theory, and says very plainly what he thinks of much talk without a basis of observation. It commends a mastery in experiment as the most important thing for science. It suggests, of course, by implication at least, that a man should know all sciences and all applications of them ”