GENERAL PREFACE TO BACON'S
PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS

By ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS

(1) OUR knowledge of Bacon's method is much less complete than it is commonly supposed to be. Of the Novum Organum, which was to contain a complete statement of its nature and principles, we have only the first two books; and although in other parts of Bacon's writings, as for instance in the Cogitata et Visa de Interpretations Naturæ, many of the ideas contained in these books recur in a less systematic form, we yet meet with but few indications of the nature of the subjects which were to have been discussed in the others. It seems not improbable that some parts of Bacon's system were never perfectly developed even in his own mind. However this may be, it is certain that an attempt to determine what his method, taken as a whole, was or would have been, must necessarily involve a conjectural or hypothetical element; and it is, I think, chiefly because this circumstance has not been sufficiently recognized, that the idea of Bacon's philosophy has generally speaking been but imperfectly apprehended.

(2) Of the subjects which were to have occupied the remainder of the Novum Organum we learn something from a passage at the end of the second book.

“Nunc vero,” it is said at the conclusion of the doctrine of prerogative instances, “ad adminicula et rectificationes inductionis, et deinceps ad concreta, et latentes processus, et latentes schematismos, et reliqua quae aphorismo xxi ordine proposuimus, pergendum”.* On referring to the twenty-first aphorism we find a sort of table of contents of the whole work. “Dicemus itaque primo loco, de prærogativis instantiarum; secundo, de adminiculis inductionis; tertio, de rectificatione inductionis; quarto, de variatione inquisitionis pro naturâ subjecti quinto, de prærogativis naturarum quatenus ad inquisitionem, sive de eo quod inquirendum est prius et posterius; sexto, de terminis inquisitionis, sive de synopsi omnium naturarum in universo; septimo, de deductione ad praxin, sive de eo quod est in ordine ad hominem; octavo, de parascevis ad inquisitionem; postremo autem, de scalâ ascensoriâ et descensoriâ axiomatum.” † Of these nine subjects the first is the only one with which we are at all accurately acquainted.

(3) Bacon's method was essentially inductive. He rejected the use of syllogistic or deductive reasoning, except when practical applications were to be made of the conclusions, axiomata, to which the inquirer had been led by a systematic process of induction. “Logica quæ nunc habetur inutilis est ad inventionem scientiarum. …. Spes est una in inductione verâ.” ¹ It is to be observed that wherever Bacon speaks of an “ascending” process, he is to be understood to mean induction, of which it is the character to proceed from that which is nobis notius to that which is notius simpliciter. Contrariwise when he speaks of a descent, he always refers to the correlative process of deduction. Thus when in the Partis secundæ Delineatio he says, … “meminerint homines in inquisitione activâ necesse esse rem per scalam decensoriam (cujus usum in contemplativâ sustulimus) confici: omnis enim operatio in individuis versatur quæinfimo loco sunt,”—we are to understand that in Bacon's system deduction is only admissible in the inquisitio activa; that is, in practical applications of the results of induction. Similiarly in the Distributio Opens he says, “Rejicimus syllogismum; neque id solùm quoad principia (ad quæ nee illi earn adhibent) sed etiam quoad propositiones medias”*. Everything was to be established by induction. “In constituendo autern axiomate forma inductionis alia quàm adhuc in usu fuit excogitanda est, eaque non ad principia tantum (quæ vocant) probanda et invenienda, sed etiam ad axiomata minora, et media, denique omnia.”²

(4) It is necessary to determine the relation in which Bacon conceived his method to stand to ordinary induction. Both methods set out “a sensu et particularibus,” and acquiesce “in maximé generalibus”³; but while ordinary induction proceeds “per enumerationem simplicem,” by a mere enumeration of particular cases, “et precario concludit et periculo exponitur ab instantiâ contradictoriâ”, the new method “naturam separare debet, per rejectiones et exclusiones debitas; et deinde post negativas tot quot sufficiunt super affirmativas concludere ” ⁴. A form of induction was to to be introduced, “quæ ex aliquibus generaliter concludat ita ut instantiam contradictoriam inveniri non posse demonstretur” ⁵. In strong contrast with this method stands “the induction which the logicians speak of ”, which “is utterly vicious and incom-petent”. … “For to conclude upon an enumeration of particulars, without instance contradictory, is no conclusion, but a conjecture”. … “And this form, to say truth, is so gross, as it had not been possible for wits so subtile as have managed these things to have offered it to the world, but that they trusted to their theories and dogmaticals, and were imperious and scornful towards particulars⁶.” We thus see what is meant by the phrase “quot sufficiunt” in the passage which has been cited from the Novum Organum; it means “as many as may suffice in order to the attainment of certainty”, it being necessary to have a method of induction, “quæ experientiam solvat et separet, et per exclusiones et rejectiones debitas necessario concludat” ⁷. Absolute certainty is therefore one of the distinguishing characters of the Baconian induction. Another is that it renders all men equally capable, or nearly so, of attaining to the truth. “Nostra verò inveniendi scientias ea est ratio ut non multum ingeniorum acumini et robori relinquatur; sed quæ ingenia et intellectus ferè exæequet” ⁸; and this is illustrated by the difficulty of describing a circle liberâ manu, whereas every one can do it with a pair of compasses. “Omninò similis est nostra ratio.” The cause to which this peculiarity is owing, is sufficiently indicated by the illustration: the method “exæquat ingenia”, “cùm omnia per certissimas regulas et demonstrationes transigat”.

(5) Absolute certainty, and a mechanical mode of procedure such that all men should be capable of employing it, are thus two great features of the Baconian method. His system can never be rightly understood if they are neglected, and any explanation of it which passes them over in silence leaves unexplained the principal difficulty which that system presents to us. But another difficulty takes the placeof the one which is thus set aside. It becomes impossible to justify or to understand Bacon's assertion that his method was essentially new. “Nam nos,” he says in the preface to the Novum Organum, “si profiteamur nos meliora afferre quam antiqui, eandem quam illi viam ingressi, nullâ verborum arte efficere possimus, quin inducatur quædam ingenii, vel excellentiæ, vel facultatis comparatio, sive contenue. … Verùm cum per nos illud agatur, ut alia omnino via intellectui aperiatur illis intentata et incognita, commutata tota jam ratio est”, etc.* He elsewhere speaks of himself as being “in hâc re plane protopirus, et vestigia nullius sequutus” ⁹. Surely this language would be out of place, if the difference between him and those who had gone before him related merely to matters of detail; as, for instance, that his way of arranging the facts of observation was more convenient than theirs, and lois way of applying an inductive process to them more systematic. And it need not be remarked that induction in itself was no novelty at all. The nature of the act of induction is as clearly stated by Aristotle as by any later writer. Bacon's design was surely much larger than it would thus appear to have been. Whoever considers his writings without reference to their place in the history of philosophy will I think be convinced that he aimed at giving a wholly new method,—a method universally applicable, and in all cases infallible. By this method, all the knowledge which the human mind is capable of receiving might be attained, and attained without unnecessary labour. Men were no longer to wander from the truth in helpless uncertainty. The publication of this new doctrine was the Temporis Partus Masculus; it was as the rising of a new sun, before which “the borrowed beams of moon and stars” were to fade away and disappear¹⁰.

(6) That the wide distinction which Bacon conceived to exist between his own method and any which had previously been known has often been but slightly noticed by those who have spoken of his philosophy, arises probably from a wish to recognize in the history of the scientific discoveries of the last two centuries the fulfilment of his hopes and prophecies. One of his early disciples however, who wrote before the scientific movement which commenced about Bacon's time had assumed a definite form and character—I mean Dr. Hooke—has explicitly adopted those portions of Bacon's doctrine which have seemingly been as a stumbling-block to his later followers. In Hooke's General Scheme or Idea of the Present State of Natural Philosophy¹¹, which is in many respects the best commentary on Bacon, we find it asserted that in the pursuit of knowledge, the intellect “is continually to be assisted by some method or engine which shall be as a guide to regulate its actions, so as that it shall not be able to act amiss. Of this engine no man except the incomparable Verulam hath had any thoughts, and he indeed hath promoted it to a very good pitch.” Something however still remained to be added to this engine or art of invention, to which Hooke gives the name of philosophical algebra. He goes on to say, “I cannot doubt but that if this art be well prosecuted and made use of, an ordinary capacity with industry will be able to do very much more than has yet been done, and to show that even physical and natural inquiries as well as mathematical and geometrical will be capable also of demonstration; so that henceforward the business of invention will not be so much the effect of acute wit, as of a serious and industrious prosecution” ¹². Here the absolute novelty of Bacon's method, its demonstrative character, and its power of reducing all minds to nearly the same level, are distinctly recognized.

(7) Before we examine the method of which Bacon proposed to make use, it is necessary to determine the nature of the problems to which it was, for the most part at least, to be applied. In other words, we must endeavour to determine the idea which he had formed of the nature of science.

Throughout his writings, science and power are spoken of as correlative— “in idem coincidunt”; and the reason of this is that Bacon always assumed that the knowledge of the cause would in almost all cases enable us to produce the observed effect. We shall see hereafter how this assumption connected itself with the whole spirit of his philosophy. I mention it now because it presents itself in the passage in which Bacon's idea of the nature of science is most distinctly stated. “Super datum corpus novam naturam, sive novas naturas, generare et superinducere, opus et intentio est humanæ potentiæ. Datas autem naturæ formam, sive difierentiam veram, sive naturam naturantem, sive fontem emanationis, (ista enim vocabula habemus quas ad indicationem rei proxime accedunt) invenire, opus et intentio est humanæ sciential.” This passage, with which the second book of the Novum Organum commences, requires to be considered in detail.

In the first place it is to be remarked, that natura signifies “abstract quality” —it is used by Bacon in antithesis with corpus or “concrete body”. Thus the passage we have quoted amounts to this, that the scope and end of human power is to give new qualities to bodies, while the scope and end of human knowledge is to ascertain the formal cause of all the qualities of which bodies are possessed.

Throughout Bacon's philosophy, the necessity of making abstract qualities (naturæ) the principal object of our inquiries is frequently insisted on. He who studies the concrete and neglects the abstract cannot be called an interpreter of nature. Such was Bacon's judgment when, apparently at an early period of his life, he wrote the Temporis Partus Masculus ¹³; and in the Novum Organum he has expressed an equivalent opinion: “quòd iste modus operandi, (qui naturas intuetur simplices licet in corpore concreto) procedat ex iis quæ in naturâ suntconstantia et æterna et catholica, et latas præbeat potentiæ humanæ vias¹⁴”. Quite in accordance with this passage is a longer one in the Advancement of Learning, which I shall quote in extenso, as it is exceedingly important. “The forms of substances, I say, as they are now by compounding and transplanting multiplied, are so perplexed as they are not to be inquired; no more than it were either possible or to purpose to seek in gross the forms of those sounds which make words, which by composition and transposition of letters are infinite. But on the other side to inquire the form of those sounds or voices which make simple letters is easily comprehensible, and being known induceth and manifesteth the forms of all words which consist and are compounded of them. In the same manner, to inquire the form of a lion, of an oak, of gold—nay of water, or air—is a vain pursuit; but to inquire the forms of sense, of voluntary motion, of vegetation, of colours, of gravity and levity, of density, of tenuity, of heat, of cold, and all other natures and qualities which like an alphabet are not many, and of which the essences upheld by matter of all creatures do consist,—to inquire, I say, the true forms of these, is that part of metaphysique which we now define of.” And a little farther on we are told that it is the prerogative of metaphysique to consider “the simple forms or difference of things” (that is to say, the forms of simple natures), “which are few in number, and the degrees and co-ordinations whereof make all this variety”.

We see from these passages why the study of simple natures is so important— namely because they are comparatively speaking few in number, and because, notwithstanding this, a knowledge of their essence would enable us, at least in theory, to solve every problem which the universe can present to us.

As an illustration of the doctrine of simple natures, we may take a passage which occurs in the Silva Silvarum. “Gold,” it is there said, “has these natures: greatness of weight, closeness of parts, fixation, pliantness or softness, immunity from rust, colour or tincture of yellow. Therefore the sure way, though most about, to make gold, is to know the causes of the several natures before rehearsed, and the axioms concerning the same. For if a man can make a metal that hath all these properties, let men dispute whether it be gold or no¹⁵.”

Of these simple natures Bacon has given a list in the third book of the De Augmenlis. They are divided into two classes: schematisms of matter, and simple motions. To the former belong the abstract qualities, dense, rare, heavy, light, &c, of which thirty-nine are enumerated, the list being concluded with a remark that it need not be carried farther, “neque ultra rem extendimus”. The simple motions—and it will be observed that the word “motion” is used in a wide and vague sense—are the motus antitypiæ, which secures the impenetrability of matter; the motus nexûs, commonly called the motus ex fugâ vacui, &c.; and of these motions fourteen are mentioned. This list however does not profess to be complete, and accordingly in the ?ovum Organum (ii. 48) another list of simple motions is given, in which nineteen species are recognised.

The view of which we have now been speaking—namely, that it is possible to reduce all the phenomena of the universe to combinations of a limited number of simple elements—is the central point of Bacon's whole system. It serves, as we shall see, to explain the peculiarities of the method which he proposed.

(8) In what sense did Bacon use the word “Form”? This is the next question which, in considering the account which he has given of the nature of science, it is necessary to examine. I am, for reasons which will be hereafter mentioned, much disposed to believe that the doctrine of Forms is in some sort an extraneous part of Bacon's system. His peculiar method may be stated independently of this doctrine, and he has himself so stated it in one of his earlier tracts, namely the Valerius Terminus. It is at any rate certain, that in using the word “Form” he did not intend to adopt the scholastic mode of employing it. He was much in the habit of giving to words already in use a new signification. “To me,” he remarks in the Advancement of Learning, “it seemeth best to keep way with antiquity usque ad aras, and therefore to retain the ancient terms, though I sometimes alter the uses and definitions.” And thus though he has spoken of the scholastic forms as figments of the human mind ¹⁶, he was nevertheless willing to employ the word “Form” in a modified sense, “præsertim quum hoc vocabulum invaluerit, et familiariter occurrat” ¹⁷. He has however distinctly stated that in speaking of Forms, he is not to be understood to speak of the Forms “quibus hominum contemplationes et cogitationes hactenus assueverunt”¹⁸.

As Bacon uses the word in his own sense, we must endeavour to interpret the passages in which it occurs by means of what he has himself said of it; and this may I think be satisfactorily accomplished.

We may begin by remarking that in Bacon's system, as in those of many others, the relation of substance and attribute is virtually the same as the relation of cause and effect. The substance is conceived of as the causa immanens of its attributes ¹⁹, or in other words it is the formal cause of the qualities which are referred to it. As there is a difference between the properties of different substances there must be a corresponding difference between the substances themselves. But in the first state of the views of which we are speaking this latter difference is altogether unimaginable: “distincte quidem intelligi potest, sed non explicari imaginabiliter” ²⁰. It belongs not to natural philosophy, but to metaphysics.

These views however admit of an essential modification. If we divide the qualities of bodies into two classes, and ascribe those of the former class to substance as its essential attributes, while we look on those of the latter as connected with substance by the relation of cause and effect—that is, if we recognise the distinction of primary and secondary qualities—the state of the question is changed. It now becomes possible to give a definite answer to the question, Wherein does the difference between different substances, corresponding to the difference between their sensible qualities, consist?

The answer to this question of course involves a reference to the qualities which have been recognised as primary; and we are thus led to the principle that in the sciences which relate to the secondary qualities of bodies the primary ones are to be regarded as the causes of the secondary²¹.

This division of the qualities of bodies into two classes is the point of transition from the metaphysical view from which we set out to that of ordinary physical science. And this transition Bacon had made, though not perhaps with a perfect consciousness of having done so. Thus he has repeatedly denied the truth of the scholastic doctrine that Forms are incognoscible because supra-sensible ²²; and the reason of this is clearly that his conception of the nature of Forms relates merely to the primary qualities of bodies. For instance, the Form of heat is a kind of local motion of the particles of which bodies are composed ²³, and that of whiteness, a mode of arrangement among those particles²⁴. This peculiar motion or arrangement corresponds to and engenders heat or whiteness, and this in every case in which those qualities exist. The statement of the distinguishing character of the motion or arrangement, or of whatever else may be the Form of a given phenomenon, takes the shape of a law; it is the law in fulfilling which any substance determines the existence of the quality in question. It is for this reason that Bacon sometimes calls the Form a law; he has done this particularly in a passage which will be mentioned a little farther on.

With the view which has now been stated, we shall I think be able to understand every passage in which Bacon speaks of Forms;—remembering however that as he has not traced a boundary line between primary and secondary qualities, we can only say in general terms that his doctrine of Forms is founded upon the theory that certain qualities of bodies are merely subjective and phenomenal, and are to be regarded as necessarily resulting from others which belong to substance as its essential attributes. In the passage from which we set out ²⁵, the Form is spoken of as vera differentia, the true or essential difference,—as natura naturans—and as the fons emanationis. The first of these expressions refers to the theory of definition by genus and difference. The difference is that which gives the thing defined its specific character. If it be founded on an accidental circumstance the definition, though not incorrect if the accident be an inseparable one, will nevertheless not express the true and essential character of its subject; contrariwise, if it involve a statement of the formal cause of the thing defined.

The second of these phrases is now scarcely used, except in connexion with the philosophy of Spinoza. It had however been employed by some of the scholastic writers ²⁶. It is always antithetical to natura naturata, and in the passage before us serves not inaptly to express the relation in which the Form stands to the phenomenal nature which results from it.

The phrase fons emanationis does not seem to require any explanation. It belongs to the kind of philosophical language which attempts, more or less successfully, to give clearness of conception by means of metaphor. It is unnecessary to remark how much this is the case in the later development of scholasticism.

A little farther on in the second book of the Novum Organum than the passage we have been considering—namely in the thirteenth aphorism—Bacon asserts that the “forma rei” is “ipsissima res”, and that the thing and its Form differ only as “apparens et existens, aut exterius et interius, aut in ordine ad hominem et in ordine ad Universum”. Here the subjective and phenomenal character of the qualities whose form is to be determined is distinctly and strongly indicated.

The principal passage in which the Form is spoken of as a law occurs in the second aphorism of the same book. It is there said that, although in nature nothing really exists (vere existat) except “corpora individua edentia actus puros individuos ex lege”, yet that in doctrine this law is of fundamental importance, and that it and its clauses (paragraphi) are what he means when he speaks of Forms.

In denying the real existence of anything beside individual substances, Bacon opposes himself to the scholastic realism; in speaking of these substances as “edentia actus,” he asserts the doctrine of the essential activity of substance; by adding the epithet “puros” he sepaxates what Aristotle termed ἐυτελέχειαι from mere motions or κινήσεις, thereby by implication denying the objective reality of the latter; and, lastly, by using the word “individuos”, he implies that though in contemplation and doctrine the form law of the substance (that is, the substantial form) is resoluble into the forms of the simple natures which belong to it, as into clauses, yet that this analysis is conceptual only, and not real.

It will be observed that the two modes in which Bacon speaks of the Form, namely as ipsissima res and as a law, differ only, though they cannot be reconciled, as two aspects of the same object.

Thus much of the character of the Baconian Form. That it is after all only a physical conception appears sufficiently from the examples already mentioned, and from the fact of its being made the most important part of the subject-matter of the natural sciences.

The investigation of the Forms of natures or abstract qualities is the principal object of the Baconian method of induction. It is true that Bacon, although he gives the first place to investigations of this nature, does not altogether omit to mention as a subordinate part of science, the study of concrete substances. The first aphorism of the second book of the Novum Organum sufficiently explains the relation in which, as he conceived, the abstract and the concrete, considered as objects of science, ought to stand to one another. This relation corresponds to that which in the De Augmentis [iii. 4.], he had sought to establish between Physique and Metaphysique, and which he has there expressed by saying that the latter was to be conversant with the formal and final causes, while the former was to be confined to the efficient cause and to the material. It may be asked, and the question is not easily answered, Of what use the study of concrete bodies was in Bacon's system to be, seeing that the knowledge of the Forms of simple natures would, in effect, include all that can be known of the outward world? I believe that, if Bacon's recognition of physique as a distinct branch of science which was to be studied apart from metaphysique or the doctrine of Forms, can be explained except on historical grounds—that is, except by saying that it was derived from the quadripartite division of causes given by Aristotle ²⁷—the explanation is merely this, that he believed that the study of concrete bodies would at least at first be pursued more hopefully and more successfully than the abstract investigations to which he gave the first rank ²⁸.

However this may be, it seems certain that Bacon's method, as it is stated in the Novum Organum, is primarily applicable to the investigation of Forms, and that when other applications were made of it, it was to be modified in a manner which is nowhere distinctly explained. All in fact that we know of these modifications results from comparing two passages which have been already quoted²⁹, namely the two lists in which Bacon enumerates the subjects to be treated of in the latter books of the Novum Organum.

It will be observed that in one of these lists the subject of concrete bodies corresponds to the “variation of the investigation according to the nature of the subject” in the other, and from this it seems to follow that Bacon looked on his method of investigating Forms as the fundamental type of the inductive process, from which in its other applications it deviated more or less according to the necessity of the case. This being understood, we may proceed to speak of the inductive method itself.

(9) The practical criterium of a Form by means of which it is to be investigated and recognised, reduces itself to this,—that the form nature and the phenomenal nature (so to modify, for the sake of distinctness, Bacon's phraseology) must constantly be either both present or both absent; and moreover that when either increases or decreases, the other must do so too ³⁰. Setting aside the vagueness of the second condition, it is to be observed that there is nothing in this criterium to decide which of two concomitant natures is the Form of the other. It is true that in one place Bacon requires the form nature, beside being convertible with the given one, to be also a limitation of a more general nature. His words are “natura alia quæ sit cum naturâ datâ convertibilis et tarnen sit limitatio naturæ notions instar generis veri” ³¹. Of this the meaning will easily be apprehended if we refer to the case of heat, of which the form is said to be a kind of motion—motion being here the natura notior, the more general natura, of which heat is a specific limitation; for wherever heat is present there also is motion, but not vice versâ. Still the difficulty recurs, that there is nothing in the practical operation of Bacon's method which can serve to determine whether this subsidiary condition is fulfilled; nor is the condition itself altogether free from vagueness.

To each of the three points of that which I have called the practical criterium of the Form corresponds one of the three tables with which the investigation commences. The first is the table “essentiæ et præsentiæ”, and contains all known instances in which the given nature is present. The second is the table of declination or absence in like case (declinationis sive absentiæ in proximo), and contains instances which respectively correspond to those of the first table, but in which, notwithstanding this correspondence, the given nature is absent. The third is the table of degrees or comparison (tabula graduum sive tabula comparativæ), in which the instances of the given nature are arranged according to the degree in which it is manifested in each.

It is easy to see the connexion between these tables, which are collectively called tables of appearance, “comparentiæ,” and the criterium. For, let any instance in which the given nature is present (as the sun in the case of heat, or froth in the case of whiteness) be resolved into the natures by the aggregation of which our idea of it is constituted; one of these natures is necessarily the form nature, since this is always to be present when the given nature is. Similarly, the second table corresponds to the condition that the Form and the given nature arc to be absent together, and the third to that of their increasing or decreasing together.

After the formation of these tables, how is the process of induction to be carried into effect? By a method of exclusion. This method is the essential point of the whole matter, and it will be well to show how much importance Bacon attached to it.

In the first place, wherever he speaks of ordinary induction and of his own method he always remarks that the former proceeds “per enumerationem simplicem”, that is, by a mere enumeration of particular cases, while the latter makes use of exclusions and rejections. This is the fundamental character of his method, and it is from this that the circumstances which distinguish it from ordinary induction necessarily follow. Moreover we are told that whatever may be the privileges of higher intelligences, man can only in one way advance to a knowledge of Forms: he is absolutely obliged to proceed at first by negatives, and then only can arrive at an affirmative when the process of exclusion has been completed (post omnimodam exclusionem)³². The same doctrine is taught in the exposition of the fable of Cupid. For according to some of the mythographi Cupid comes forth from an egg whereon Night had brooded. Now Cupid is the type of the primal nature of things; and what is said of the egg hatched by Night refers, Bacon affirms, most aptly to the demonstrations whereby our knowledge of him is obtained; for knowledge obtained by exclusions and negatives results, so to speak, from darkness and from night. We see, I think, from this allegorical fancy, as clearly as from any single passage in his writings, how firmly fixed in his mind was the idea of the importance, or rather of the necessity, of using a method of exclusion.

It is not difficult, on Bacon's fundamental hypothesis, to perceive why this method is of paramount importance. For assuming that each instance in which the given nature is presented to us can be resolved into (and mentally replaced by) a congeries of elementary natures, and that this analysis is not merely subjective or logical, but deals, so to speak, with the very essence of its subject matter, it follows that to determine the form nature among the aggregate of simple natures which we thus obtain, nothing more is requisite than the rejection of all foreign and unessential elements. We reject every nature which is not present in every affirmative instance, or which is present in any negative one, or which manifests itself in a greater degree when the given nature manifests itself in a less, or vice versâ. And this process when carried far enough will of necessity lead us to the truth; and meanwhile every step we take is known to be an approximation towards it. Ordinary induction is a tentative process, because we chase our quarry over an open country; here it is confined within definite limits, and these limits become as we advance continually narrower and narrower.

From the point of view at which we have now arrived, we perceive why Bacon ascribed to his method the characters by which, as we have seen, he conceived that it was distinguished from any which had previously been proposed. When the process of exclusion has been completely performed, only the form nature will remain; it will be, so to speak, the sole survivor of all the natures combined with which the given nature was at first presented to us. There can therefore be no doubt as to our result, nor any possibility of confounding the Form with any other of these natures. This is what Bacon expresses, when he says that the first part of the true inductive process is the exclusion of every nature which is not found in each instance where the given one is present, or is found where it is not present, or is found to increase where the given nature decreases, or vice versâ. And then, he goes on to say, when this exclusion has been duly performed, there will in the second part of the process remain, as at the bottom, all mere opinions having been dissipated (abeuntibus in fumum opinionibus volatilibus), the affirmative Form, which will be solid and true and well defined³³. The exclusion of error will necessarily lead to truth.

Again, this method of exclusion requires only an attentive consideration of each “instantia”, in order first to analyse it into its simple natures, and secondly to see which of the latter are to be excluded—processes which require no higher faculties than ordinary acuteness and patient diligence. There is clearly no room in this mechanical procedure for the display of subtlety or of inventive genius.

Bacon's method therefore leads to certainty, and may be employed with nearly equal success by all men who are equally diligent.

In considering the only example which we have of its practical operation, namely the investigation of the form of heat ³⁴, it is well to remark a circumstance which tends to conceal its real nature. After the three tables of Comparentia, Bacon proceeds to the Exclusiva, and concludes by saying that the process of exclusion cannot at the outset (sub initiis) be perfectly performed. He therefore proposes to go on to provide additional assistance for the mind of man. These are manifestly to be subsidiary to the method of exclusions; they are to remove the obstacles which make the Exclusiva defective and inconclusive. But in the meanwhile, and as it were provisionally, the intellect may be permitted to attempt an affirmative determination on the subject before it: “Quod genus tentamenti Permissionem Intellectûs, sive Interpretationem inchoatam, sive Vindemiationem primam, appellare consuevimus”. The phrase Permissio Intellectûs sufficiently indicates that in this process the mind is suffered to follow the course most natural to it; it is relieved from the restraints hitherto imposed on it, and reverts to its usual state. In this Vindemiatio we accordingly find no reference to the method of exclusion: it rests immediately on the three tables of Comparentia; and though of course it does not contradict the results of the Exclusiva, yet on the other hand it is not derived from them. If we lose sight of the real nature of this part of the investigation, which is merely introduced by the way “because truth is more easily extricated from error than from confusion”, we also lose sight of the scope and purport of the whole method. All that Bacon proposes henceforth to do is to perfect the Exclusiva; the Vindemiatio prima, though it is the closing member of the example which Bacon makes use of, is not to be taken as the type of the final conclusion of any investigation which he would recognise as just and legitimate. It is only a parenthesis in the general method, whereas the Exclusiva, given in the eighteenth aphorism of the second book, is a type or paradigm of the process on which every true induction (inductio vera) must in all cases depend.

It may be well to remark that in this example of the process of exclusion, the table of degrees is not made use of.

Bacon, as we have seen, admits that the Exclusiva must at first be in some measure imperfect; for the Exclusiva, being the rejection of simple natures, cannot be satisfactory unless our notions of these natures are just and accurate, whereas some of those which occur in his example of the process of rejection are ill-defined and vague ³⁵. In order to the completion of his method, it is necessary to remove this defect. A subsidiary method is required, of which the object is the formation of scientific conceptions. To this method also Bacon gives the name of induction; and it is remarkable that induction is mentioned for the first time in the Novum Organum in a passage which relates not to axioms but to conceptions ³⁶. Bacon's induction therefore is not a mere ἐπαγωγή, it is also a method of definition; but of the manner in which systematic induction is to be employed in the formation of conceptions we learn nothing from any part of his writings. And by this circumstance our knowledge of his method is rendered imperfect and unsatisfactory. We may perhaps be permitted to believe that so far as relates to the subject of which we are now speaking, Bacon never, even in idea, completed the method which he proposed. For of all parts of the process of scientific discovery the formation of conceptions is the one with respect to which it is the most difficult to lay down general rules. The process of establishing axioms Bacon had succeeded, at least apparently, in reducing to the semblance of a mechanical operation; that of the formation of conceptions does not admit of any similar reduction. Yet these two processes are in Bacon's system of co-ordinate importance. All commonly received general scientific conceptions Bacon condemns as utterly worthless ³⁷. A complete change is therefore required; yet of the way in which induction is to be employed in order to produce this change he has said nothing.

This omission is doubtless connected with the kind of realism which runs through Bacon's system, and which renders it practically useless. For that his method is impracticable cannot I think be denied, if we reflect not only that it never has produced any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been established cannot be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance with it. In all cases this process involves an element to which nothing corresponds in the tables of comparence and exclusion; namely the application to the facts of observation of a principle of arrangement, an idea, existing in the mind of the discoverer antecedently to the act of induction. It may be said that this idea is precisely one of the naturæ into which the facts of observation ought in Bacon's system to be analysed. And this is in one sense true; but it must be added that this analysis, if it be thought right so to call it, is of the essence of the discovery which results from it. To take for granted that it has already been effected is simply a petitio principii. In most cases the mere act of induction follows as a matter of course as soon as the appropriate idea has been introduced. If, for instance, we resolve Kepler's discovery that Mars moves in an ellipse into its constituent elements, we perceive that the whole difficulty is antecedent to the act of induction. It consists in bringing the idea of motion in an ellipse into connexion with the facts of observation; that is, in showing that an ellipse may be drawn through all the observed places of the planet. The mere act of induction, the ἐπαγωγή, is perfectly obvious. If all the observed places lie on an ellipse of which the sun is the focus, then every position which the planet successively occupies does so too. This inference, which is so obvious that it must have passed through the mind of the discoverer almost unconsciously, is an instance of induction “per enumerationem simplicem”; of which kind of induction Bacon, as we have seen, has said that it is utterly vicious and incompetent.

The word realism may perhaps require some explanation. I mean by it the opinion, which Bacon undoubtedly entertained, that for the purpose of investigation, the objects of our thoughts may be regarded as an assemblage of abstract conceptions, so that these conceptions not only correspond to realities, which is of course necessary in order to their having any value, but may also be said adequately to represent them. In his view of the subject, ideas or conceptions (notiones) reside in some sort in the objects from which we derive them; and it is necessary, in order that the work of induction may be successfully accom-plished, that the process by which they are derived should be carefully and systematically performed. But he had not perceived that which now at least can scarcely be doubted of, that the progress of science continually requires the formation of new conceptions whereby new principles of arrangement are introduced among the results which had previously been obtained, and that from the necessary imperfection of human knowledge our conceptions never, so to speak, exhaust the essence of the realities by which they are suggested. The notion of an alphabet of the universe, of which Bacon has spoken more than once, must therefore be given up; it could at best be only an alphabet of the present state of knowledge. And similarly of the analysis into abstract natures on which the process of exclusion, as we have seen, depends. No such analysis can be used in the manner which Bacon prescribes to us; for every advance in knowledge presupposes the introduction of a new conception, by which the previously existing analysis is rendered incomplete, and therefore erroneous.

We have now, I think, succeeded in tracing the cause both of the peculiarities of Bacon's method, and of its practical inutility. Some additional information may be derived from an examination of the variations with which it is presented in different parts of his writings;—less however than if we could arrange his smaller works in chronological order. Nevertheless two results, not without their value, may be thus obtained; the one, that it appears probable that Bacon came gradually to see more of the difficulties which beset the practical application of his method; and the other, that the doctrine of Forms is in reality an extraneous part of his philosophy.

(10) In the earliest work in which the new method of induction is proposed, namely, the English tract entitled Valerius Terminus, no mention is made of the necessity of correcting commonly received notions of simple natures. The inductive method is therefore presented in its simplest form, unembarrassed with that which constitutes its principal difficulty. But when we advance from Valerius Terminus to the Partis secundæ Delineatio et Argumentum, which is clearly of a later date, we find that Bacon has become aware of the necessity of having some scientific method for the due construction of abstract conceptions. It is there said that the “pars informans”, that is, the description of the new method, will be divided into three parts—the ministration to the senses, the ministration to the memory, and the ministration to the reason. In the first of these, three things are to be taught; and of these three the first is how to construct and elicit from facts a duly formed abstract conception (bona notio); the second is how the sense may be assisted; and the third, how to form a satisfactory collection of facts. He then proposes to go on to the other two ministrations.

Thus the construction of conceptions would have formed the first part of the then designed Novum Organum; and it would seem that this arrangement was not followed when the Novum Organum was actually written, because in the meantime Bacon had seen that this part of the work involved greater difficulties than he had at first supposed. For the general division into “ministrationes” is preserved in the Novum Organum³⁸, though it has there become less prominent than in the tract of which we have been speaking. In the ministration to the senses, as it is mentioned in the later work, nothing is expressly included but a good and sufficient natural and experimental historia; the theory of the formation of conceptions has altogether disappeared, and both this ministration and that to the memory are postponed to the last of the three, which contains the theory of the inductive process itself. We must set out, Bacon says, from the conclusion, and proceed in a retrograde order to the other parts of the subject. He now seems to have perceived that the theory of the formation of conceptions and that of the establishment of axioms are so intertwined together, that the one cannot be presented independently of the other, although in practice his method absolutely requires these two processes to be carried on separately. His view now is. that at first axioms must be established by means of the commonly received conceptions, and that subsequently these conceptions must themselves be rectified by means of the ulterior aids to the mind, the fortiora auxilia in usum intellectûs, of which he has spoken in the nineteenth aphorism of the second book. But these fortiora auxilia were never given, so that the difficulty which Bacon had once proposed to overcome at the outset of his undertaking remained to the last unconquered. The doctrine of the Novum Organum (that we must first employ commonly received notions, and afterwards correct them) is expressly laid down in the De Interpretatione Naturœ Sententiœ Duodecim³⁹. Of this however the date is uncertain.

It is clear that while any uncertainty remains as to the value of the conceptions (notiones) employed in the process of exclusion, the claim to absolute immunity from error which Bacon has made on behalf of his general method must be more or less modified: and of this he seems to have been aware when he wrote the second book of the Novum Organum ⁴⁰.

(11) Thus much of the theory of the formation of conceptions. With regard to the doctrine of Forms, it is in the first place to be observed that it is not mentioned as a part of Bacon's system, either in Valerius Terminus or in the Partis secundœ Delineatio, or in the De Interpretatione Natures Sententiœ Duodcim, although in the two last named tracts the definition of science which is found at the outset of the second book of the Novum Organum is in substance repeated. This definition, as we have seen, makes the discovery of Forms the aim and end of science; but in both cases the word form is replaced by causes. It is however to be admitted that in the Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, Forms are spoken of as one of the subjects of Metaphysique. Their not being mentioned except ex obliquo in Valerius Terminus is more remarkable, because Bacon has there given a distinct name to the process which he afterwards called the discovery of the Form. He calls it the freeing of a direction, and remarks that it is not much other matter than that which in the received philosophies is termed the Form or formal cause. Forms are thus mentioned histori-cally, but in the dogmatic statement of his own view they are not introduced at all ⁴¹.

The essential character of Bacon's philosophy, namely the analysis of the concrete into the abstract, is nowhere more prominent than in Valerius Terminus. It is there said “that every particular that worketh any effect is a thing compounded more or less of diverse single natures, more manifest and more obscure, and that it appeareth not to whether (which) of the natures the effect is to be ascribed” ⁴². Of course the great problem is to decide this question, and the method of solving it is called “the freeing of a direction”. In explanation of this name, it is to be observed that in Valerius Terminus the practical point of view predominates. Every instance in which a given nature is produced is regarded as a direction for its artificial production. If air and water are mingled together, as in snow, foam, &c, whiteness is the result. This then is a direction for the production of whiteness, since we have only to mingle air and water together in order to produce it. But whiteness may be produced in other ways, and the direction is therefore not free. We proceed gradually to free it by rejecting, by means of other instances, the circumstances of this which are unessential: a process which is the exact counterpart of the Exclusiva of the Novum Organum. The instance I have given is Bacon's, who developes it at some length.

Here then we have Bacon's method treated entirely from a practical point of view. This circumstance is worthy of notice because it serves to explain why Bacon always assumes that the knowledge of Forms would greatly increase our command over nature, that it “would enfranchise the power of man unto the greatest possibility of works and effects”. It has been asked what reason Bacon had for this assumption. “Whosoever knoweth any Form,” he has said in the Advancement, “knoweth the utmost possibility of superinducing that nature upon any variety of nature”. Beyond question, the problem of superinducing the nature is reduced to the problem of superinducing the Form; but what reason have we for supposing that the one is more easy of solution than the other? If we knew the Form of malleability, that is, the conditions which the intimate constitution of a body must fulfil in order that it may be malleable, does it follow that we could make glass so? So far as these questions admit of an answer, Valerius Terminus appears to suggest it. Bacon connected the doctrine of Forms with practical operations, because this doctrine, so to speak, represented to him his original notion of the freeing of a direction, which, as the phrase itself implies, had altogether a practical significance.

Even in the ?ovum Organum the definition of the form is made to correspond with the præceptum operandi, or practical direction ⁴³. The latter is to be “certum, liberum, et disponens sive in ordine ad actionem”. Now a direction to produce the Form as a means of producing the given nature is certain, because the presence of the Form necessarily determines that of the nature. It is free, because it requires only that to be done which is necessary, since the nature can never be present unless its Form is so too. Thus far the agreement between the practical and the scientific view is satisfactory. But to the third property which the practical direction is to possess, namely its being in ordine ad actionem, or such as to facilitate the production of the proposed result, corresponds the condition that the Form is to be “the limitation of a more general nature;” that is to say, the Form presents itself as a limitation of something more general than the given nature, and as determining, not merely logically but also causatively, the existence of the latter. At this point the divergence between the practical and the scientific view becomes manifest; practical operations do not, generally speaking, present to us anything analogous to the limitation here spoken of, and there is no reason to suppose that it is easier to see how this limitation is to be introduced than to see how the original problem, the έξ ἀρχiς τροξείμευξυ, may be solved. But this divergence seems to show that the two views are in their origin heterogeneous; that the one contains the fundamental idea of Bacon's method, while the other represents the historical element of his philosophy. We shall however hereafter have occasion to suggest considerations which may seem to modify this conclusion.

(12) In a survey of Bacon's method it is not necessary to say much of the doctrine of prerogative instances, though it occupies the greater part of the second book of the Novum Organum. It belongs to the unfinished part of that work; at least it is probable that its practical utility would have been explained when Bacon came to speak of the Adminicula Inductionis.

Twenty-seven kinds of instances are enumerated, which are said to excel ordinary instances either in their practical or their theoretical usefulness. To the word instance Bacon gives a wide range of signification. It corresponds more nearly to observation than to any other which is used in modern scientific language.

Of some classes of these instances collections are to be made for their own sake, and independently of any investigation into particular natures. Such, for instance, are the instantiæ conformes; Bacon's examples of which are mostly taken from comparative anatomy. One of them is the analogy between the fins of fishes, the feet of quadrupeds, and the feet and wings of birds; another the analogy of the beak of birds and the teeth of other animals, &c ⁴⁴.

The other classes of prerogative instances have especial reference to particular investigation, and are to be collected when individual tables of comparence are formed.

It would seem from this that the theory of prerogative instances is intended to guide us in the formation of these tables. But it is difficult to see how the circumstances which give any instance its prerogative could have been appreciated à priori. An instantia crucis ⁴⁵, to take the most celebrated of all, has its distinguishing character only in so far as it is viewed with reference to two contending hypotheses. In forming at the outset of an inquiry the appropriate tables, nothing would have led the interpreter to perceive its peculiar value.

This theory, whatever may be its practical utility, may supply us with new illustrations of the importance in Bacon's method of the process of exclusions.

At the head of the list—and placed there, we may presume, from the importance of the end which they promote—stand the instantise solitariæ, whose prerogative it is to accelerate the Exclusiva⁴⁶ . These are instances which exhibit the given nature in subjects which have nothing in common, except that nature itself, with the other subjects which present it to us. Thus the colours shown by the prism or by crystals are a solitary instance of colour, because they have nothing in common with the fixed colours of flowers, gems, &c. Whatever therefore is not independent of the particular constitution of these bodies must be excluded from the form of colour.

Next to the instantiæ solitariæ are placed the instantiæ migrantes, which show the given nature in the act of appearing or of disappearing; as when glass, being pounded, becomes white. Of these it is said they not only accelerate and strengthen the Exclusiva, but also confine within narrow limits the Affirmative, or Form itself, by showing that it is something which is given or taken away by the observed change. A little farther on Bacon notices the danger in these cases of confounding the efficient cause with the Form, and concludes by saying “But this is easily remedied by a legitimately performed Exclusiva”.

Other remarks to the same effect might be made with reference to other classes of instances; but these are probably sufficient.

I shall now endeavour to give an account of Bacon's views on some questions of philosophy, which are not immediately connected with the reforms he proposed to introduce.

(13) It has sometimes, I believe, been supposed that Bacon had adopted the atomic theory of Democritus. This however is by no means true; but certainly he often speaks much more favourably of the systems of the earlier physicists and especially of that of Democritus, than of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. In doing this he may perhaps have been more or less influenced by a wish to find in antiquity something with which the doctrines he condemned might be contrasted. But setting this aside, it is certain that these systems were more akin to his own views than the doctrine of the schools of which Socrates may be called the founder. The problems which they proposed were essentially physical:— given certain material first principles, to determine the origin and causes of all phenomena. They were concerned, for the most part, with that which is accessible to the senses, or which would be so if the senses were sufficiently acute. In this they altogether agree with Bacon, who, though he often speaks of the errors and shortcomings of the senses, yet had never been led to consider the question which stands at the entrance of metaphysical philosophy, namely whether the subjective character of sensation does not necessarily lead to scepticism, if no higher grounds of truth can be discovered. The scepticism of Protagoras, and Plato's refutation of it, seemed to him to be both but idle subtleties. Plato, Aristotle, and their followers, were in his opinion but a better kind of sophists. What Dionysius said to Plato, that his discourse was but dotage, might fitly be applied to them all⁴⁷.

It cannot be denied, that to Bacon all sound philosophy seemed to be included in what we now call the natural sciences; and with this view he was naturally led to prefer the atomic doctrine of Democritus to any metaphysical speculation.

Every atomic theory is an attempt to explain some of the phenomena of matter by means of others; to explain secondary qualities by means of the primary. And this was what Bacon himself proposed to do in investigating the Forms of simple natures. Nevertheless he did not adopt the peculiar opinions of Democritus and his followers. In the Novum Organum he rejects altogether the notion of a vacuum and that of the unchangeableness of matter⁴⁸. His theory of the intimate constitution of bodies does not, he remarks, relate to atoms properly so called, but only to the actually existing ultimate particles. Bacon cannot therefore be said to be a follower of Democritus, though he has spoken of him as being, of all the Greek philosophers, the one who had the deepest insight into nature ⁴⁹.

But though Bacon was not an atomist, he was what has been called a mechanical physiologist. Leibnitz's remark that the restorers of philosophy⁵⁰ all held the principle that the properties of bodies are to be explained by means of magnitude, figure, and motion (a statement which envelopes every such theory of matter as that of Descartes, together with the old atomic doctrine), is certainly true of Bacon.

(14) The opinion which Bacon had formed as to the class of subjects which ought to be included in Summary Philosophy (the English phrase by which he renders the expression he sometimes uses, namely prima philosophia), is worthy of attention.

In the writings of Aristotle, the first philosophy denotes the science which since his time has been called metaphysic. It is the science of first principles, or as he has himself defined it, the science of that which is, as such. In the first book of the Metaphysics we find a proof of the necessity of having such a science, distinct from and in a manner superior to all others.

Bacon, adopting Aristotle's name, applied it differently. With him, the first philosophy is divided into two parts. Of these the first is to be a receptacle of the axioms which do not belong exclusively to particular sciences, but are common to more than one; while the second is to inquire into the external or adventitious conditions of existences—such as the much and the little, the like and the unlike, the possible and impossible, &c.

In illustration of the contents of the first part, Bacon quotes several axioms which are applicable in more than one science. Of these the first is, “If to unequals are added equals, the sums are unequal,” which is a mathematical principle, but which, Bacon says, referring to the distinction laid down by Aristotle between commutative and distributive justices, obtains also in moral science; inasmuch as it is the rule by which distributive justice must be guided. The next is, “Things which agree with a third, agree with one another,”—which is also a mathematical principle, but yet, differently stated, forms the foundation of the theory of syllogism. Thus far Bacon's doctrine does not materially dissent from Aristotle's, who has taught the necessity of recognising in all sciences two kinds of principles, those which are proper to the subject of each science, and those which, connecting themselves with the doctrine of the categories, are common to all. The last are in his nomenclature axioms, though Bacon, following probably Ramus, who in his turn followed Cicero and the Stoics, gives a much more general sense to this word; and it is to be remarked that Aristotle has given as an instance of an axiom the first of the two which I have quoted from Bacon, or at any rate another which is in effect equivalent to it. But most of the instances which Bacon goes on to give are of a different nature. They are not derived from the laws of thought, but on the contrary involve an empirical element, and therefore are neither self-evident nor capable of an à priori proof. Thus the axiom that “a discord resolved into a concord improves the harmony”, is, Bacon says, not only true in music, but also in ethics and the doctrine of the affections. But this axiom is in its literal sense merely a result of observation, and its application to moral subjects is clearly only analogical or tropical. Again, that “the organs of the senses are analogous to instruments which produce reflection”, is, Bacon says, true in perspective, and also in acoustics; being true both of the eye and ear. Here we have a result of observation which is made to enter into two different sciences simply in virtue of the classification employed. For this axiom, if true, properly belongs to physiology, and neither to perspective nor to acoustics; though in a secondary and derivative manner a portion of the truth it includes may be introduced into these sciences. And so on. There is however one of these axioms which is of higher authority: “Quantum naturæ nec minuitur nec augetur”; which, Bacon says, is true not only in physics, but also in natural theology, if it be stated in a modified form; viz. if it be said that it belongs to Omnipotence to make something out of nothing, or vice versâ. Of this axiom it may be remarked, that it is common to physics and natural theology simply because the subjects of these sciences are in some measure common to both; wherein it differs from the Aristotelian conception of an axiom. But it is of more interest to observe that this axiom, of which the truth is derived from our notion of substance, and which can never be established by an empirical demonstration, is constantly quoted by Bacon as a principle of incontestable truth; of which his theory of specific gravities is in some sort only an application.

The question arises both with regard to this axiom and to the others, In what manner Bacon supposed that they ought to be demonstrated; or, if he thought they required no demonstration, in what manner he conceived that the mind apprehended their truth? He has certainly affirmed in express terms that there can be only two ways of arriving at truth, namely syllogism and induction; both of which are manifestly inapplicable to some at least of the principles which he includes in the philosophia prima. But whether he would have admitted that this dictum admits of exception in relation to these cases, or on the other hand had not been led to consider the nature of the difficulty which they present, we have, I think, no means of deciding. It is to be observed that the philosophia prima is spoken of as a collection (receptaculum) of axioms—a phrase which implies that it is not a science in itself, having its own principles and an independent development, but that, contrariwise, it derives from the contributions of other sciences the elements of which it is composed. Of the second part we are unable to speak more definitely than of the first. It is obviously a reflexion of the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories⁵¹ , from which, however, Bacon intended to contrast it by requiring that the “conditiones entium,” which he has doubtless called transcendent from their applicability to all classes of objects, should be treated not logically but physically ⁵².

But then what are the questions to be resolved in this mode of treating them? Bacon gives some examples of the discussions which ought to occupy this part of philosophy. The first is, why there is so much of one kind of substance, and so little of another—why, for instance, so much more iron in the world than gold, &c. This belongs to the inquiry “de multo et parvo”. Again, in treating “de simili et diverso”, it ought to be explained why between dissimilar species are almost always interposed others which partake of the nature of both, and form, as it were, ambiguous species—for instance, bats between birds and quadrupeds, or moss between corruption and plants, &c. The difficulty however which I have already mentioned in speaking of the other part of the philosophia prima recurs with reference to this, namely by what method were the questions here proposed to be answered? If by in-duction, by induction on what data? and if not, by what other way of arriving at truth?

The illustrations which Bacon has given, and perhaps his way of looking at the whole subject, connect themselves with what has recently been called palætiology. The questions which Bacon proposes are questions as to how that which actually exists, and which in the present order of things will continue to exist, came into being—whether abruptly or by slow transitions, and under what agency. He seems to point, though from a distance, to discussions as to the formation of strata and the succession of species. Yet on the other hand the discussion on Like and Unlike was to include at least one portion of a different character, namely why, in despite of the maxim “similia similibus gaudent”, iron does not attract iron but the magnet, nor gold gold, but quicksilver.

(15) Another subject, sufficiently interesting to be here mentioned, though less connected with Bacon's general views, is the doctrine which he entertained touching the nature of the soul. He distinguishes in several parts of his writings between the animal soul, common, at least in kind, to man and to the brutes, and the immortal principle infused by the divine favour into man only⁵³. To the latter he gave the name of spiraculum, which was of course suggested by the text, “Spiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vita?”. M. Bouillet, in his edition of Bacon's philosophical works ⁵⁴, condemns this doctrine of man's having two souls, and goes on to remark that Bacon was led to adopt it in deference to the opinions of the schoolmen, and that it is also sanctioned by S. Augustine. In these remarks he is much less accurate than usual; the truth being that the doctrine of the duality of the soul is condemned very strongly by S. Augustine and by the schoolmen, and that there is no doubt as to the source from which Bacon derived it, namely from the writings of Telesius. The notion of a lower soul, distinct in essence from the higher principle of man's nature, is in reality much older than Telesius. We find it for instance among the Manichees—a circumstance which makes it singular that S. Augustine should have been supposed to countenance it. Both in his work De Ecclesiœ Dogmatibus, and nearly in the same words in that De Animâ, he rejects in the most precise and accurate manner the doctrine of two distinct souls, affirming that there is but one, which is at once the principle of nutrition, of sensation, and of reason. In opposing the tenets of the Manichæans, he has more than once condemned the same doctrine, though less at length than in the works just mentioned. The schoolmen also peremptorily rejected the doctrine which M. Bouillet has affirmed that Bacon derived from them. Thus S. Thomas Aquinas says, “Impossibile est in uno homine esse plures animas per essentiam differentes sed una tantum est anima intellectiva quæ vegetativæ et sensitivse et intellectivæ officiis fungitur” ⁵⁵. And this follows at once from the received opinion, that the soul is joined to the body as its form (ut forma unitur corpori). It would be easy to multiply citations to the same effect; but as no schoolman could venture to contradict an emphatically expressed opinion of S. Augustine, it appears unnecessary to do so ⁵⁶.

Telesius of Cosenza, whom Bacon has commended as “the best of the novellists”, was one of the Italian reformers of philosophy. Tennemann's remark that the reform which he attempted to introduce was but partial, as having reference only to the natural sciences, is not altogether accurate, but it describes with sufficient correctness the general character of his writings. They contain an attempt to explain all phenomena, including those of animal life, on the hypothesis of the continuous conflict and reciprocal action of two formal principles, heat and cold. His other doctrines are either subordinated to this kind of dualism, or are merely the necessary complements of a system of philosophy. In proposing to inquire into the nature and origin of the soul, he had no other end in view than to arrive at an explanation of the phenomena of sensation, voluntary motion, &c, which should be in accordance with his fundamental hypothesis. He therefore sets out from the physiological point of view; and in order to explain the phenomena of animal and vegetable life, refers them to an indwelling spiritus, or animal soul, which in plants resides in the bark and fibres, and in animals in the white and exsanguine parts of the body, the bones being however excepted⁵⁷. The animal and vegetable souls are in essence alike, but the latter is “paulo quam qui in animalibus inest crassior”. In both cases the origin of this anima is the same; it is educed from the seed (educta ex semine), and is to all intents as truly material as any other part of the body.

In the application of these views to the soul of man, Telesius was met by considerations of another order. The soul educed ex semine, was (like the body which it animated, and of which it was only the subtlest portion) propagated by generation; whereas it was decided by orthodox theology that souls are not ex traduce, do not pass from parent to child in the way Telesius must have supposed. The soul is a gift, which after death is to return to Him who gave it. I do not conceive that Telesius's attempt to co-ordinate this doctrine with his own views arose merely from a wish to avoid the imputation of heresy. His writings are, I think, free from that tone of mocking deference to authority by which those of many of his contemporaries are disfigured. They have, on the contrary, much of the melancholy earnestness which characterises those of his disciple Campanella. The difference between the faculties of men and brutes appeared to him to be such that merely a subtler organisation of the spiritus would be in-sufficient to account for it. Man's higher faculties are to be ascribed to a higher principle, and this can only be conceived of as a divinely formed soul. The question as to the relation between the two souls may be presented under two aspects, namely what are the faculties in man which ought to be ascribed to each of them? and again are these two souls wholly independent, and if not, how are they connected? The criterion by which Telesius would decide what ought to be reserved as the peculiar appanage of the divinely created soul, appears to be this—that which in man is analogous to the faculties we recognise in brutes ought to be ascribed to the principle by which they are animated and which we possess in common with them. Whatever, on the contrary, seems peculiar to man, more especially the sense of right and wrong, which is the foundation of all morality, ought to be ascribed to the principle which it is our prerogative to possess ⁵⁸.

As to the connexion between the two, Telesius decides “both on grounds of human reason and from the authority of Scripture” that they cannot be wholly independent of each other, and he accordingly affirms that the divinely created soul is the Form of the whole body, and especially of the spiritus itself. That the soul is the Form of the body he could not without heresy deny ⁵⁹, although he condemns Aristotle for saying so; asserting that Aristotle refers to the spiritus, and not to the true soul, with which probably he was unacquainted ⁶⁰. The tendency of these views is towards materialism; the immaterial principle being annexed to the system, as it were, ab extra. Accordingly Telesius's disciple Donius, whom Bacon has more than once referred to, omits it altogether ⁶¹.

Comparing the views of Telesius with those of Bacon, we see that in both the duality of the soul is distinctly asserted, and that in both the animal soul is merely material⁶². Our knowledge of the divinely derived principle must rest principally on revelation. Let this knowledge be drawn, he counsels us, from the same fountain of inspiration from whence the substance of the soul itself proceeded.

Bacon rejects or at least omits Telesius's formula, that this higher soul is the Form of the body—a formula to which either in his system or that of Telesius no definite sense could be attached. He differs from his predecessor in this also, that with him the spiritus is more a physiological and less a psychological hypo-thesis than with Telesius—it is at least less enwrapped in a psychological system than we find it in the De Rerum Naturâ.

On the other hand, he has not, I think, recognised so distinctly as Telesius or Campanella the principle that to the rational soul alone is to be referred the idea of moral responsibility; and the fine passage on the contrast of public and private good in the seventh book of the De Augmentis seems to show (if Bacon meant that the analogy on which it is based should be accepted as anything more than an illustration) that he conceived that something akin to the distinction of right and wrong is to be traced in the workings, conscious or unconscious, of all nature.

(16) We are here led to mention another subject, on which again the views of Telesius appear to have influenced those of Bacon. That all bodies are animated, that a principle of life pervades the whole universe, and that each portion, beside its participation in the life of the world, has also its proper vital principle, are doctrines to which in the time of Bacon the majority of philosophical reformers were at least strongly inclined. The most celebrated work in which they are set forth is perhaps the De Sensu Rerum of Campanella. The share which it had in producing the misfortunes of his life is well known, and need not here be noticed.

In one of his letters to Thomasius ⁶³, Leibnitz points out how easy the transition is from the language which the schoolmen held touching substantial forms and the workings of nature to that of Campanella: “Ita reditur ad tot deunculos quot formas substantiales et Gentilem prope polytheismum. Et certe omnes qui de substantiis Ulis incorporalibus corporum loquuntur non possunt mentem suam explicare nisi translatione a Mentibus sumptâ. Hinc enim attributus illis appetitus vel instinctus ille naturalis ex quo et sequitur cognitio naturalis, hinc illud axioma: Natura nihil facit frustra, omnis res fugit sui destructionem, similia similibus gaudent, materia appetit formam nobiliorem, et alia id genus. Quum tarnen reverâ in naturâ nulla sit sapientia, nullus appetitus, ordo vero pulcher ex eo oriatur, quia est horologium Dei”. To the censure implied in these remarks Aristotle is himself in some measure liable, seeing that he ascribed the various changes which go on around us to the half-conscious or unconscious workings of an indwelling power which pervades all things, and to which he gives the name of Nature. Nature does nothing in vain and of things possible realizes the best, but she does not act with conscious prevision. She is, so to speak, the instinct of the universe.

It is on account of these views that Bacon charges Aristotle with having set aside the doctrine of a providence, by putting Nature in the place of God ⁶⁴. Nevertheless Bacon himself thought it possible to explain large classes of phenomena by referring them, not certainly to the workings of Nature, but to the instincts and appetites of individual bodies. His whole doctrine of simple motions is full of expressions which it is very difficult to understand without supposing that Bacon had for the time adopted the notion of universally diffused sensation. Thus the “motus nexûs” is that in virtue of which bodies, as delighting in mutual contact, will not suffer themselves to be separated. All bodies, we are told, abhor a solution of continuity, and the rising of cream is to be explained by the desire of homogeneous elements for one another.

The distinction which Bacon has elsewhere taken between sensation and perception, which corresponds to Leibnitz's distinction between apperception and perception, does not appear to accord with these expressions. He there asserts that inanimate bodies have perception without sensation. But such words as desrie and horror imply not only a change worked in the body to which they are applied in virtue of the presence of another, but also a sense of that presence,— that is, in Bacon's language, not only perception but sensation.

The contrast between the expressions I have quoted and those of which he made use in other parts of his writings, is remarkable. In stating the doctrine of simple motions, he speaks as if all phenomena were to be explained by means of the desires and instincts of matter, every portion of which is more or less consciously sentient. But in other passages we find what at first appears to be a wholly different view, namely that phenomena are to be explained by the site, form, and configuration of atoms or ultimate particles, capable neither of desire nor fear, and in all their motions simply fulfilling the primary law impressed on them by Providence.

Nevertheless there is here no real inconsistency. For Bacon, following Telesius, ascribed all the phenomena of animal life to the spiritus, which, though it is the subtlest portion of the body which it animates, is notwithstanding as truly material as any other part. In every body, whether animated or not, dwells a portion of spirit, and it was natural therefore to ascribe to it some share of the powers which the more finely constituted spirits of animals were supposed to possess. How far however this analogy between animate and inanimate bodies ought to be carried, was a doubtful question; and we need not be surprised to find that Bacon sometimes denies and sometimes appears to admit that the latter as well as the former are, to a certain extent at least, consciously sentient. But in all cases he proposed to explain the phenomena of animal life by means of the ultimate constitution of matter. Thus such phenomena as the rising of cream, the subsidence of the lees of wine, the clinging of gold leaf round the finger, &c, were to be explained in the first instance by the instincts and appetites of portions of matter, and afterwards to receive a deeper and more fundamental explanation when these instincts and appetites were themselves shown to result from the site, form, and configuration of the ultimate particles of which all bodies are composed.

To the doctrine of universally diffused sensation, so far as he adopted it, Bacon was led by the writings of many of his contemporaries, and in particular by those of Telesius. Brucker has remarked, and with perfect truth, that this doctrine is stated as distinctly, though not so conspicuously, by Telesius as by Campanella. Added to which this doctrine serves to explain phenomena of which, without it, no explanation could readily be given. Thus Bacon is much disposed to ridicule Gilbert for the pains he had bestowed on the subject of electrical attraction, affirming that it is merely the result of the power which friction possesses to excite the appetite of bodies for contact. This appetite “aerem non bene tolerat, sed aliud tangibile mavult”.

(17) Bacon's opinion as to Final Causes has often been discussed. It seems however scarcely necessary to refute the interpretation which on no just grounds has been given to the phrase, “causarum finalium inquisitio tanquam virgo Deo consecrata nihil parit⁶⁵”, Nihil parit, as the context plainly shows, [means simply non parit opera] ⁶⁶. Bacon is speaking of the classification of physics and metaphysics—the one being the science of the material and efficient cause, and the other containing two parts, namely the doctrine of forms and the doctrine of final causes. To physics corresponds in practical application mechanica or mechanics—to metaphysics, magia or natural magic. But magia corresponds to metaphysique because the latter contains the doctrine of Forms; that of final causes admitting from its nature of no practical application. It is this idea which Bacon has expressed by saying that the doctrine in question is, as it were, a consecrated virgin.

It is not sufficiently remarked that final causes have often been spoken of without any reference to a benevolent intention. When it is said that the final cause of a stone's falling is “locus deorsum,” the remark is at least but remotely connected with the doctrine of an intelligent providence. We are to remember that Bacon has expressly censured Aristotle for having made use of final causes without referring to the fountain from which they flow, namely the providence of the Creator. And in this censure he has found many to concur.

Again, in any case in which the benevolent intention can be perceived, we are at liberty to ask by what means and according to what laws this benevolent intention is manifested and made efficient. If this question is not to be asked, there is in the first place an end of physical science, so far as relates to every case in which a benevolent intention has been or can be recognised; and in the second, the argument à posteriori founded on the contrivance displayed in the works of creation is entirely taken away.

This is, in effect, what Bacon says in the passage of the De Augmentis in which hecomplains of the abuse of final causes. If, he affirms, the physical cause of any phenomenon can be assigned as well as the final, so far is this from derogating from our idea of the divine wisdom, that on the contrary it does but confirm and exalt it. “Dei sapientia effulget mirabilius cum natura aliud agit, providentia aliud elicit, quam si singulis schematibus et motibus naturalibus providentiæ characteres essent impressi⁶⁷.” And a little farther on he expresses an opinion which we shall do well always to remember, namely that so far is the study of physical causes from withdrawing men from God and providence, that on the contrary those who have occupied themselves in searching them out have never been able to find the end of the matter without having recourse at length to the doctrine of divine providence.

In one respect Bacon seems to have overlooked the advantage which is to be derived from the study of final causes. In the sciences which relate to animal and vegetable life, the conviction that every part of the organisation has its appropriate function which conduces to the well-being of the whole, serves not only to direct our thoughts to the wisdom of the Creator, but also to guide our investigation into the nature of the organisation itself.

(18) It will now, I think, be well to attempt to arrange the fundamental ideas of Bacon's system in the order in which, as we may conceive, they presented themselves to his mind. To do this will necessarily involve some degree of repetition; but it will enable us to form a better idea of the scope and spirit of his philosophy.

When, at the outset of his philosophical life, he looked round on the visible universe, it would seem that to him the starry heavens, notwithstanding the grandeur of the spectacle they present to us, were of less interest than things on earth. The stars in their courses declare the glory of God; but, excepting the great lights which rule the day and night, they exert no conspicuous influence on the welfare of mankind. And on the other hand it is certain that we can in nowise affect the causes by which these phenomena are produced. But on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, Nature is perpetually working in ways which it is conceivable that we may be able to imitate, and in which the beneficence of the Creator, wherein His glory is to us chiefly visible, is everywhere to be traced. Wherever we turn, we see the same spectacle of unceasing and benevolent activity. From the seed of corn Nature develops the stalk, the blade, and the ear, and superinduces on the yet immature produce the qualities which make it fit for the sustenance of man. And so, too, animal life is developed from its first rudiments to all the perfection which it is capable of attaining. And though this perfection is necessarily transitory, yet Nature, though she cannot perpetuate the individual, yet continues the species by unceasing reproduction.

But the contemplation of God's works, glorious as they are, is not the whole of man's business here on earth. For in losing his first estate he lost the dominion over the creatures which was its highest privilege, and ever since has worn out few and evil days, exposed to want, sickness, and death. His works have all been vanity and vexation of spirit, his labour nearly profitless, his knowledge for the most part useless. Is his condition altogether hopeless, or may it not be possible to soften, though not to set aside, the effects of the primal curse? To this question Bacon unhesitatingly made answer, that of His great mercy God would bless our humble endeavours to restore to suffering humanity some part at least of what it had lost; and thus he has more than once described the instauration of the sci-ences as an attempt to regain, so far as may be, that of which the Fall deprived us.

A deep sense of the misery of mankind is visible throughout his writings. The principal speaker in the Redargutio Philosophiarum, and the son [father] of Solo-mon's House in the New Atlantis, both express Bacon's idea of what the philosopherought to be; and of both it is said that their countenance was as the countenance of one who pities men. Herein we see the reason why Bacon has often been called an utilitarian; not because he loved truth less than others, but because he loved men more.

The philosopher is therefore not merely to contemplate the works of the Creator, but also to employ the knowledge thus obtained for the relief of man's estate. If we ask how this is to be done, we find, Bacon tells us (and here he still seems to recur to the idea that the new philosophy is to be in some sort a restoration to man of his original condition), that as no one can enter into the kingdom of heaven “nisi sub personâ infantis,” so, too, in order to obtain a real and fruitful insight into Nature, it is necessary to become as a little child, to abnegate received dogmas and the idols by which the mind is most easily beset, and then to follow with childlike singleness of purpose the indications which Nature gives us as to how her operations are performed. For we can command Nature only by obeying her; nor can Art avail anything except as Nature's handmaiden. We can affect the conditions under which Nature works; but things artificial as well as things natural are in reality produced not by Art but Nature. Our power is merely based upon our knowledge of the procedure which Nature follows. She is never really thwarted or controlled by our operations, though she may be induced to depart from her usual course, and under new and artificial conditions to produce new phenomena and new substances.

Natural philosophy, considered from this point of view, is therefore only an answer to the question, How does Nature work in the production of phenomena? When, to take a trivial instance, she superinduces yellowness on the green leaf, or silently and gradually transforms ice into crystal, we ask how are these changes brought about?—what conditions are necessary and sufficient in order that the phenomena we observe may be engendered? If we knew what these conditions are, we might ourselves be able to determine their existence, and then the corresponding phenomena would necessarily follow, since the course of Nature is absolutely uniform.

At this point of the development of Bacon's system, the question of method would naturally present itself to him. Having determined what the object of our inquiries is to be, we must endeavour to find a way of attaining it.

For this end Bacon, as we have seen, proposes to examine all the cases in which the phenomenon to be reproduced has been observed, and to note all the conditions which in each case accompany its production. Of all these those only can be necessary which are universally concomitant. Again he proposes to observe all the cognate cases in which, though certain of the conditions before mentioned are present, they are not accompanied by the required phenomenon. By these two classes of observations all the superfluous conditions may be rejected, and those which remain are what we seek. Wherever we can determine their existence we can produce the phenomenon in question.

This process is what Bacon calls, in Valerius Terminus, the freeing of a direction, and in his later writings the investigation of the Form.

His thinking that this process would in all cases, or even generally, be successful, arose from his not having sufficiently appreciated the infinite variety and complexity of Nature. Thus he strongly condemns as most false and pernicious the common opinion that the number of individual phenomena to be observed is sensibly infinite, and commends Democritus (a commendation which seems rather to belong to Lucretius) for having perceived that the appearance of limitless variety which the first aspect of Nature presents to us disappears on a closer inspection.

The transition from this view of Nature to the idea that it was possible to form an alphabet of the universe, and to analyse all phenomena into their real elements, is manifestly easy.

By the new method of induction it would be possible to ascertain the conditions requisite and sufficient for the production of any phenomenon; and as this determination was meant chiefly to enable us to imitate Nature, or rather to direct her operations, Bacon was naturally led to assume that the conditions in question would be such that it would in all cases be possible to produce them artificially.

Now the power of man is limited to the relations of space. He brings bodies together; he separates them; but Nature must do the rest. On the other hand the conditions of the existence of any phenomenon must be something which inheres more closely in the essence of the substance by which that phenomenon is exhibited than the phenomenon itself. And this something is clearly the inward configuration of the substance; that is, the form and arrangement etc. of its ultimate particles. Whiteness, for instance, depends on an even arrangement of these particles in space; and herein we perceive a perfect analogy between what man can do and what Nature requires to be done. The familiar processes of the arts consist simply in giving particular forms to portions of matter, in arranging them and setting them in motion according to certain rules. Between arranging stones so as to form a house, and arranging particles so as to produce whiteness, there is no difference but that of scale. So in other cases. The difference of scale once set aside, it seemed to follow that the knowledge of the Form would in all cases lead to great practical results.

Thus far of the end which the new philosophy proposes to itself, and of the method which it must employ. The next question relates to the mode of procuring and arranging the materials on which this method is to work. In this part of the subject we again perceive the influence of Bacon's opinion touching the limitedness of Nature. No one acquainted with the history of natural philosophy would think it possible to form a collection of all the facts which are to be the materials on which any science is to operate, antecedently to the formation of the science itself.

In the first place, the observations necessary in order to the recognition of these facts would never have been made except under the guidance of some preconceived idea as to the subject of observation; and in the second, the statement which embodies the result of observation always involves some portion of theory. According to the common use of language, it is a fact and not a theory that in ordinary refraction the sine of the angle of incidence is to the sine of the angle of refraction in a given ratio. But the observations on which this statement is based, and the statement itself, presuppose the recognition of a portion of the theory of light, namely that light is propagated in straight lines—in other words they presuppose the conception of a ray. Nor would these observations have been made but for the idea in the mind of the observers that the magnitude of the angle of refraction depends on that of the angle of incidence.

As we advance farther in any science, what we call facts involve more and more of theory. Thus it is a fact that the tangent of the angle of polarisation is equal to the index of refraction. But no one could have made the observations which prove it, or have stated their result in words, without a distinct conception, first of the law of refraction, and secondly of the distinguishing character of polarised light.

The history of science and the nature of the case concur in showing that observation and theory must go on together;—it is impossible that the one can be com-pleted before the other begins. Now although Bacon did not think that observation and experiments might altogether be laid aside when once the process of interpretation had begun (we see on the contrary that one of the works of Solomon's House was the trying of experiments suggested by previously obtained conclusions), he certainly thought it possible so to sever observation from theory that the process of collecting facts and that of deriving consequences from them might be carried on independently and by different persons. This opinion was based on an imperfect apprehension of the connection between facts and theories; the connection appearing to him to be merely an external one, namely that the former are the materials of the latter. With these views that which has been al-ready noticed touching the finiteness of Nature, namely that there are but a finite and not very large number of things which for scientific purposes require to be observed⁶⁸, is altogether in accordance.

The facts on which the new philosophy was to be based being conceivable apart from any portion of theory, and moreover not excessively numerous, they might be observed and recorded within a moderate length of time by persons of ordinary diligence.

If this registering of facts were made a royal work, it might. Bacon seems to have thought, be completed in a few years: he has at least remarked that unless this were done, the foundation of the new philosophy could not be laid in the life-time of a single generation. The instauration, he has said in the general preface, is not to be thought of as something infinite and beyond the power of man to accomplish; nor does he believe that its mission can be fully completed (rem omnino perfici posse) within the limits of a single life. Something was therefore left for posterity to do; and probably the more Bacon meditated on the work he had in hand, the more was he convinced of its extent and difficulty. But the Distributio Operis sufficiently shows that he believed, when he wrote it, that the instauration of the sciences might speedily become an opus operatum. Of the Historia Naturalis on which it was to be based he there speaks, not less than of the Novum Organum, as of a work which he had himself accomplished,—“Tertia pars opens complectitur Phænomena Universi”,—not “complecti debet”. Doubtless the preface was written before the work itself was commenced; still if he had not thought it possible to make good what he here proposes to do, he would have expressly said so⁶⁹.

In a letter to Fulgenzio, written probably when Bacon was “dagli anni e da fortuna oppresso”, he remarks that “these things” (the instauration of the sciences) require some ages for the ripening of them. But though he despaired of completing his design himself, and even thought that some generations must pass before it received its consummation, yet he always regarded it as a thing which sooner or later would be effectually accomplished, and which would thenceforth remain as a κτnμα ὲς ἀεί. His instauration of the sciences had a definite end, in which when it was once attained it would finally acquiesce; nor is there any-thing in his writings to countenance the assumption which has been often made, that in his opinion the onward progress of knowledge was to continue throughout all time. On the contrary, the knowledge which man is capable of might, he thought, be attained, not certainly at once, but within the compass of no very long period. In this doubtless he erred; for knowledge must always continue to be imperfect, and therefore in its best estate progressive.

Bacon has been likened to the prophet who from Mount Pisgah surveyed the Promised Land, but left it for ethers to take possession of. Of this happy image perhaps part of the felicity was not perceived by its author. For though Pisgah was a place of large prospect, yet still the Promised Land was a land of definite extent and known boundaries, and moreover it was certain that after no long time the chosen people would be in possession of it all. And this agrees with what Bacon promised to himself and to mankind from the instauration of the sciences.

A truer image of the progress of knowledge may be derived from the symbol which, though on other grounds, Bacon himself adopted. Those who strive to increase our knowledge of the outward universe may be said to put out upon an apparently boundless sea; they dedicate themselves

“To unpathed waters—undreamed shores”;

and though they have a good hope of success, yet they know they can subdue but a small part of the new world which lies before them.

(19) In this respect, then, as in others, the hopes of Francis Bacon were not destined to be fulfilled. It is neither to the technical part of his method nor to the details of his view of the nature and progress of science that his great fame is justly owing. His merits are of another kind. They belong to the spirit rather than to the positive precepts of his philosophy.

He did good service when he declared with all the weight of his authority and of his eloquence that the true end of knowledge is the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate. The spirit of this declaration runs throughout his writings, and we trust has worked for good upon the generations by which they have been studied. And as he showed his wisdom in coupling together things divine and human, so has he shown it also in tracing the demarcation between them, and in rebuking those who by confounding religion and philosophy were in danger of making the one heretical and the other superstitious.

When, not long before Bacon's time, philosophy freed itself from the tutelage of dogmatic theology, it became a grave question how their respective claims to authority might be most fitly co-ordinated. It was to meet, perhaps rather to evade, this question, that the distinction between that which is true in philosophy and that which is true in religion was proposed and adopted. But it is difficult to believe that the mind of any sincere and truth-loving man was satisfied by this distinction. Bacon has emphatically condemned it. “There is,” he affirms, “no such opposition between God's word and his works”. Both come from him who is the father of lights, the fountain of all truths, the author of all good; and both are therefore to be studied with diligence and humility. To those who wish to discourage philosophy in order that ignorance of second causes may lead men to refer all things to the immediate agency of the first, Bacon puts Job's question, “An oportet mentiri pro Deo,”—will you offer to the God of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie?

The religious earnestness of Bacon's writings becomes more remarkable when we contrast it with the tone of the most illustrious of his contemporaries. Galileo's works are full of insincere deference to authority and of an affected disbelief in his own discoveries. Surely he who loves truth earnestly will be slow to believe that the cause of truth is to be served by irony. But we must not forget the difference between the circumstances in which the two men were placed.

Next to his determination of the true end of natural philosophy and of the relation in which it stands to natural and to revealed theology, we may place among Bacon's merits his clear view of the essential unity of science. He often insists on the importance of this idea, and has especially commended Plato and Parmenides for affirming “that all things do by scale ascend to unity”. The Creator is holy in the multitude of his works, holy in their disposition, holy in their unity: it is the prerogative of the doctrine of Forms to approach as nearly as possible towards the unity of Nature, and the subordinate science of Physics ought to contain two divisions relating to the same subject. One of these ought to treat of the first principles which govern all phenomena, and the other of the fabric of the universe ⁷⁰. All classifications of the science ought to be as veins or markings, and not as sections or divisions; nor can any object of scientific inquiry be satis-factorily studied apart from the analogies which connect it with other similar objects.

But the greatest of all the services which Bacon rendered to natural philosophy was, that he perpetually enforced the necessity of laying aside all preconceived opinions and learning to be a follower of Nature. These counsels could not to their full extent be followed, nor has he himself attempted to do so. But they contain a great share of truth, and of truth never more needful than in Bacon's age. Before his time doubtless the authority of Aristotle, or rather that of the scholastic interpretation of his philosophy, was shaken, if not overthrown. Nevertheless the systematising spirit of the schoolmen still survived; and of the reformers of philosophy not a few attempted to substitute a dogmatic system of their own for that from which they dissented.

Nor were these attempts unsuccessful. For men still leaned upon authority, and accepted as a test of truth the appearance of completeness and sicentific consistency. This state of things was one of transition; and probably no one did more towards putting an end to it than Bacon. To the dealers in systems and to their adherents he opposed the solemn declaration, that they only who come in their own name will be received of men. He constantly exhorted the seeker after truth to seek it in intercourse with Nature, and has repeatedly professed that he was no founder of a sect or school. He condemned the arrogance of those who thought it beneath the dignity of the philosopher to dwell on matters of observation and experiment, and reminded them that the sun “æque palatia et cloacas ingreditur; nec tarnen polluitur”. We do not, he continues, erect or dedicate to human pride a capitol or a pyramid; we lay the foundations in the mind of man of a holy temple, whereof the exemplar is the universe. Throughout his writings the rejection of systems and authority is coupled with the assertion, that it is beyond all things necessary that the philosopher should be an humble follower of Nature. One of the most remarkable parts of the Novum Organum is the doctrine of Idola. It is an attempt to classify according to their origin the false and ill-defined notions by which the mind is commonly beset. They come, he tells us, from the nature of the human mind in general, from the peculiarities of each man's individual mind, from his intercourse with other men, from the formal teaching of the received philosophies. All these must be renounced and put away, else no man can enter into the kingdom which is to be founded on the knowledge of Nature ⁷¹. Of the four kinds of idols Mersenne has spoken in his Vérité des Sciences, published in 1625, as of the four buttresses of the Organum of Verulam. This expression, though certainly inaccurate, serves to show the attention which in Bacon's time was paid to his doctrine of idola ⁷².

His rejection of syllogistic reasoning, in the proposed process for the establishment of axioms, was not without utility. In the middle ages and at the reform of philosophy the value of the syllogistic method was unduly exalted. Bacon was right in denying that it was possible to establish by a summary process and à priori the first principles of any science, and thence to deduce by syllogism all the propositions which that science could contain; and though he erred in rejecting deductive reasoning altogether, this error could never have exerted any practical influence on the progress of science, while the truth with which it was associated was a truth of which his contemporaries required at least to be reminded. The reason of his error seems to have been that he formed an incorrect idea of the nature of syllogism, regarding it rather as an entirely artificial process than as merely a formal statement of the steps necessarily involved in every act of reasoning. However this may be, it is certain that whenever men attempted to set aside every process for the discovery of truth except induction, they must always have been led to recognise the impossibility of doing so.

Lastly, the tone in which Bacon spoke of the future destiny of mankind fitted him to be a leader of the age in which he lived. It was an age of change and hope. Men went forth to seek in new-found worlds for the land of gold and for the fountain of youth; they were told that yet greater wonders lay within their reach. They had burst the bands of old authority; they were told to go forth from the cave where they had dwelt so long, and look on the light of heaven. It was also for the most part an age of faith; and the new philosophy upset no creed, and pulled down no altar. It did not put the notion of human perfectibility in the place of religion, nor deprive mankind of hopes beyond the grave. On the contrary, it told its followers that the instauration of the sciences was the free gift of the God in whom their fathers had trusted—that it was only another proof of the mercy of him whose mercy is over all his works.

[* Trans. below, “But now I must proceed,” etc.]

[† Trans. below, “I propose to treat them in the first place”, etc.]

[* Trans, below, “I therefore reject the syllogism,” etc.]

[* Trans. below, “For if I should profess that I,” etc. “As it is, however,” etc.]

¹ [Trans. below, “But now I must proceed,” etc.]

² [Trans. below, “I propose to treat them in the first place”, etc.]

³ Nov. Org. i. 11. and 14.

⁴ [Trans, below, “I therefore reject the syllogism,” etc.]

⁵ Nov. Org. i. 105.

⁶ Nov. Org. i. 22.

⁷ Nov. Org. i. 105.

⁸ Cogitata et Visa § 18.

⁹ Advancement of Learning. The corresponding passage in the De Augm. is in the 2nd chap. of the 5th book.

¹⁰ Distrib. Operis, § 10.

¹¹ Nov. Org. i. 61., and comp. i. 122. Also the Inquisitio legitima de Motu, and Valerius Terminus, c. 19.

¹² [Trans. below, “For if I should profess that I,” etc. “As it is, however,” etc.]

¹³ Nov. Org. i. 113.

¹⁴ See, for instance, the Prœfatio Generalis, where Bacon compares his method to the mariner's compass, until the discovery of which no wide sea could be crossed; an image probably connected with his favourite device of a ship passing through the pillars of Hercules, with the motto “Plus ultra”.

¹⁵ Published posthumously in 1705.

¹⁶ Present State of Nat. Phil. pp. 6, 7.

¹⁷ Mr. Ellis alludes, I think, to the De Interpretations Naturœ Sententiœ XII., which M. Bouillet prints as part of the Temporis Partus Masculus. My reasons for differing with M. Bouillet on this point, and placing it by itself, and assigning it a later date, will be found in a note to Mr. Ellis's Preface to the Novum Organum.—J. S.

¹⁸ Nov. Org. ii. 5.

¹⁹ Compare Nov. Org. ii. 5.

²⁰ Nov. Org. i. 51.

²¹ Nov. Org. ii. 2.

²² Nov. Org. ii. 17.

²³ See Zimmermann's Essay on the Monadology of Leibnitz, p. 81, (Vienna, 1807).

²⁴ Leibnitz, De ipsâ Naturâ.

²⁵ Whewell, Phil. Ind. Science, [book iv. ch. i.].

²⁶ See Scaliger, Exercit. in Cardan.

²⁷ Nov. Org. ii. 20.

²⁸ [Valerius Terminus, II. 1.]

²⁹ [Nov. Org ii. 1.]

³⁰ See Vossius De Vitiis Serm. in voce Naturare; and Castanæus, Distinctiones in voc. Natura.

³¹ For an explanation of which, see note to De Augmentis, iii. 4.—J. S.

³² See, in illustration of this, Nov. Org. ii. 5.

³³ Vide supra, § 2.

³⁴ Nov. Org. ii. 4, 13, 16.

³⁵ Nov. Org. ii. 4.

³⁶ Nov. Org. ii. 15.

³⁷ Nov. Org. ii. 16.

³⁸ Nov. Org. ii. 11–20.

³⁹ Nov. Org. ii. 19; and compare i. 15, which shows the necessity of a complete reform.

⁴⁰ Nov. Org. i. 14, and comp. i. 18.

⁴¹ Nov. Org. i. 15, 16.

⁴² Nov. Org. ii. 10.

⁴³ Vide § viii. of this tract.

⁴⁴ Nov. Org. ii. 19.

⁴⁵ I refer to my preface to Valerius Terminus for an illustration of some of the difficulties of this very obscure tract

⁴⁶ Val. Ter. c. 17.

⁴⁷ Nov. Org. ii. 4, which is the best comment on the dictum, Knowledge is power.

⁴⁸ Nov Org. ii. 27. It does not seem that Bacon added much to what he found in Aristotle on the subject of these analogies.

⁴⁹ Nov. Org. ii. 36.

⁵⁰ Nov. Org. ii. 22.

⁵¹ Redargut. Phil. et Nov. Org. i. 71.

⁵² Nov. Org. ii. 8. Compare Cogit. De Nat. Rerum.

⁵³ Nov. Org. i. 51.; also Parm. Teles. and Dem. Phil.

⁵⁴ Namely, the Cartesians, Verulam, Hobbes, &c. See his letter to Thomasius, p. 48 of the edition of his philosophical works by Erdmann.

⁵⁵ Trendelenberg has accordingly quoted the passages in the De Augmentis which relate to it, in the historical part of his work on the categories.

⁵⁶ De Augmentis iii. 4.

⁵⁷ De Augmentis iv. 3.

⁵⁸ Œuvres Philosophiques de Bacon, Paris, 1834.—J. S.

⁵⁹ S. Thorn. Prim. Q. 76. a. 3. Concl.

⁶⁰ With what bold ignorance the schoolmen are sometimes spoken of is well seen in Dr. Guhrauer's preface to his edition of Leibnitz De Principio Individui. The sixth proposition in the Corollarium attached to this disputation is as follows:—“Hominis solum una est anima qua? vegetativam et sensitivam virtualiter includat.” The learned Doctor declares that in this statement Leibnitz set himself in direct opposition to the schoolmen, and that it contains the germ of Leibnitz's own psychology; the statement being almost a literal transcript of that of St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum i. Q. 76. a. 3: to which I have already referred. Leibnitz scarcely thought that in following the Angelic Doctor he was protesting against scholasticism.

⁶¹ De Rerum Nat. v. 1. et vi. 26.

⁶² De Rerum Naturâ, v. 2.

⁶³ The collection known as the Clementines contains an authoritative decision on this point. “Ut quisque deinceps asserere defendere aut tenere pertinaciter præsumpserit, quod anima rationalis non sit forma corporis humani per se et essentialiter tanquam hæreticus sit censendus”. I quote from Vulpes on Duns Scotus, 46 a. 5. To this decision Telesius seems to allude, De Rer. Nat. v. 40. Campanella has expressly mentioned it.

⁶⁴ De Rer. Nat. v. 3.

⁶⁵ See his De Nat. Hominis.

⁶⁶ Proceeding e matricibus elementorum, De Augm. iv. 3.

⁶⁷ P. 48. of Erdmann's edition of his philosophical works.

⁶⁸ De Aug. iii. 4.

⁶⁹ De Augm. iii. 5. See note on the place.—J.S.

⁷⁰ I have supplied these words to complete the sentence, which ends abruptly at the bottom of a page, a fresh page having apparently been substituted for that which originally followed—J. S.

⁷¹ De Aug. iii. 4.

⁷² See the Phænomena Universi, and the Partis secundæ Del., &c.

⁷³ The sixth part containing the new philosophy itself is spoken of at the end of the Distribution as at least an inchoate work, which others must finish, but to which he hopes to give “initia non contemnenda”.

⁷⁴ The latter is in effect what is now called Kosmos.

⁷⁵ Nov. Org. i. 68. The word idolon is used by Bacon in antithesis to idea. He does not mean by it an idol or false object of worship.

⁷⁶ Compare Gassendi, Inst. Log.