Note 67 — ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER II.
Reading edition
Dr. Whewell rises into poetry—yet is not more poetical than the philosopher on whom he thus comments. "If he" (Bacon) "had had occasion to develop his simile, full of latent meaning as his similes so often are, he would probably have said, that to these final causes barrenness was no reproach, seeing they ought to be, not the mothers but the daughters of our natural sciences; and that they were barren, not by imperfection of their nature, but in order that they might be kept pure and undefiled, and so fit ministers in the temple of God."—Bridgewater Treatise. B. III. Ch. vii. sub. fin.