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arriving at truth, which method is called Induction; and that he exposed the fallacy of the syllogistic reasoning which had been in vogue before his time. This notion is about as well founded as that of the people who, in the middle ages, imagined that Virgil was a great conjurer. Many who are far too well informed to talk such extravagant nonsense, entertain what we think incorrect notions as to what Bacon really effected in this matter.

We might go on to what are called by Bacon prærogativæ instantiarum. For example: "It must be something peculiar to mincea pies, for I can eat any other pastry without the least bad effect." This is the instantia solitaria. We might easily proceed, but we have already sufficiently explained our meaning.

We repeat, that we dispute neither the ingenuity nor the accuracy of the theory contained in the second book of the Novum Organum; but we think that Bacon greatly overrated its utility. We conceive that the inductive process, like many other processes, is not likely to be better

The inductive method has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thought-performed merely because men know how they less schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the clown to the conclusion, that if he sows barley he shall nct reap wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns, that a cloudy day is the best for catching trout. The very infant, we imagine, is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and none from his father.

perform it. William Tell would not have been one whit more likely to cleave the apple if he had known that his arrow would describe a parabola under the influence of the attraction of the earth. Captain Barclay would not have been more likely to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours if he had known the place and name of every muscle in his legs. Monsieur Jourdain Not only is it not true that Bacon invented probably did not pronounce D and F more the inductive method; but it is not true that he correctly after he had been apprized that D is was the first person who correctly analyzed pronounced by touching the teeth with the end that method and explained its uses. Aristotle of the tongue, and F by putting the upper teeth had long before pointed out the absurdity of on the lower lip. We cannot perceive that the supposing that syllogistic reasoning could study of grammar makes the smallest differ ever conduct men to the discovery of any new ence in the speech of people who have always principle; had shown that such discoveries lived in good society. Not one Londoner in ten can be made by induction, and by induction thousand can lay down the rules for the proper alone; and had given the history of the induc-use of will and shall. Yet not one Londoner in tive process, concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and precision.

Again, we are not inclined to ascribe much practical value to the analysis of the inductive method which Bacon has given in the second book of the "Novum Organum." It is indeed an elaborate and correct analysis. But it is an analysis of that which we are all doing from morning to night, and which we continue to do even in our dreams. A plain man finds his stomach out of order. He never heard Lord Bacon's name. But he proceeds in the strictest conformity with the rules laid down in the second book of the "Novum Organum," and satisfies himself that minced pies have done the mischief. "I ate minced pies on Monday and Wednesday, and I was kept awake by indigestion all night." This is the comparentia ad intellectum instantiarum convenientium. "I did not eat any on Tuesday and Friday, and I was quite well." This is the comparentia instantiarum in proximo quæ natura data privantur. "I ate very sparingly of them on Sunday, and was very slightly indisposed in the evening. But on Christmas day I almost dined on them, and was so ill that I was in some danger." This is the comparentia instantiarum secundum magis et minus. "It cannot have been the brandy which I took with them. For I have drunk brandy daily for years without being the worse for it." This is the reJectio naturarum. Our invalid then proceeds to what is termed by Bacon the Vindemiatio, and pronounces that mince pies do not agree with him.

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a million ever misplaces his will and shall. No man uses figures of speech with more propriety because he knows that one figure is called a metonomy and another a synecdoche. A drayman in a passion calls out, "You are a pretty fellow," without suspecting that he is uttering irony, and that irony is one of the four primary tropes. The old systems of rhetoric were never regarded by the most experienced and discerning judges as of any use in forming an orator. "Ego hanc vim intelligo," said Cicero, "esse in præceptis omnibus, non ut ea secuti oratores eloquentiæ laudem sint adepti, sed quæ sua sponte homines eloquentes facerent, ea quosdam observasse, atque id egisse; sic esse non eloquentiam ex artificio, sed arti cium ex eloquentia natum."* We must own that we entertain the same opinion concerning the study of logic which Cicero entertained concerning the study of rhetoric. A man of sense syllogizes in celarent and cesare all day long without suspecting it; and though he may not know what an ignoratio elenchi is, has no difficulty in exposing it whenever he falls in with it, which is likely to be as often as he falls in with a reverend Master of Arts, nonrished on mode and figure in the cloisters of Oxford. Considered merely as an intellectual feat, the Organum of Aristotle can scarcely be admired too highly. But the more we compare individual with individual, school with school, nation with nation, generation with generation, the more do we lean to the opinion that the knowledge of the theory of logic has no tend ency whatever to make men good reasoners.

What Aristotle did for the syllogistic pro

* De Oratore, Lib. 1.
3A 2

cess Bacon has, in the second book of the No- | ham Grenville would have been sufficient to vum Organum, done for the inductive process; do the work. that is to say, he has analyzed it well. His rules are quite proper; but we do not need them, because they are drawn from our own constant practice.

It appears to us, then, that the difference between a sound and an unsound induction, or, to use the Baconian phraseology, between the interpretation of nature and the anticipation of nature, does not lie in this-that the interpreter of nature goes through the process analyzed in the second book of the Novum Organum and the anticipator through a different process They may both perform the same process. But the anticipator performs it foolishly or carelessly; the interpreter performs it with patience, attention, sagacity, and judgment. Now, precepts can do little towards making men patient and attentive, and still less towards making them sagacious and judicious. It is very well

dices, not to believe facts on slight evidence, not to be content with a scanty collection of facts, to put out of their minds the idola which Bacon has so finely described. But these rules are too general to be of much practical use. The question is, what is a prejudice? How long does the incredulity with which I hear a new theory propounded continue to be a wise and salutary incredulity? When does it be. come an idolum specus, the unreasonable pertinacity of a too skeptical mind? What is slight evidence? What collection of facts is scanty? Will ten instances do, or fifty, or a hundred? In how many months would the first human beings who settled on the shores of the ocean have been justified in believing that the moon had an influence on their tides? After how many experiments would Jenner have been justified in believing that he had discovered a safeguard against the small-pox? These are questions to which it would be most desi rable to have a precise answer; but unhappily they are questions to which no precise answer can be returned.

But though everybody is constantly performing the process described in the second book of the Novum Organum, some men perform it well and some perform it ill. Some are led by it to truth and some to error. It led Franklin to discover the nature of lightning. It led thousands who had less brains than Franklin to believe in animal magnetism. But this was not because Franklin went through the process described by Bacon and the dupes of Mesmer through a different process. The comparentia and rejectiones, of which we have given exam- to tell men to be on their guard against prejuples, will be found in the most unsound deduc- | tions. We have heard that an eminent judge of the last generation was in the habit of jocosely propounding after dinner a theory, that the cause of the prevalence of Jacobinism was the practice of bearing three names. He quoted on the one side Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, John Philpot Curran, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Theobald Wolfe Tone. These were instantia convenientes. He then proceeded to cite instances absentiæ in proxime:-William Pitt, John Scott, William Wyndham, Samuel Horsley, Henry Dundas, Edmund Burke. He might have gone on to instances secundum magis et minus. The practice of giving children three names has been for some time a growing practice, and Jacobinism has also been growing. The practice of giving children three names is more common in America than in England. In England we still have a king and a House of Lords, but the Americans are republicans. The rejectiones are obvious. Burke and Theobald Wolfe Tone were both Irishmen; therefore the being an Irishman is not the cause of Jacobinism. Horsley and Horne Tooke are both clergymen; therefore the being a clergyman is not the cause of Jacobinism. Fox and Wyndham were both educated at Oxford; and therefore the being educated at Oxford is not the cause of Jacobinism. Pitt and Horne Tooke were both educated at Cambridge; therefore the being educated at Cambridge is not the cause of Jacobinism. In this way our inductive philosopher arrives at what Bacon calls the vintage, and pronounces that the having three names is the cause of Jacobinism.

Here is an induction corresponding with Bacon's analysis, and ending in a monstrous absurdity. In what, then, does this induction differ from the induction which leads us to the conclusion that the presence of the sun is the cause of our having more light by day than by night? The difference evidently is not in the kind of instances, but in the number of instances; that is to say, the difference is not in that part of the process for which Bacon has given precise rules but in a circumstance for which no precise rae can possibly be given. If the learned author of the theory about Jacobinism had enlarged either of his tables a little, his system would have been destroyed. The names of Tom Paine and William Wynd

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We think, then, that it is possible to lay down accurate rules, as Bacon has done, for the performing of that part of the inductive process which all men perform alike; but that these rules, though accurate, are not wanted, because in truth they only tell us to do what we are all doing. We think that it is impossible to lay down any precise rule for the performing of that part of the inductive process which a great experimental philosopher performs in one way and a superstitious old wo man in another.

On this subject, we think, Bacon was in an error. He certainly attributed to his rules a value which did not belong to them. He went so far as to say, that if his method of making discoveries were adopted, little would depend on the degree of force or acuteness of any intellect; that all minds would be reduced to one level; that his philosophy resembled a compass or a rule which equalizes all hands, and enables the most unpractised person to draw a more correct circle or line than the best draughtsman can produce without such aid. This really seems to us as extravagant as it would have been in Lindley Murray to an nounce that everybody who should learn his

* Novum Organum, Præf. and Lib. 1, Aph. 122.

grammar would write as good English as Dryden; or in that very able writer, Dr. Whately, to promise that all the readers of his logic would reason like Chillingworth, and that all the readers of his rhetoric would speak like Burke. That Bacon was altogether mistaken as to this point will now hardly be disputed. His philosophy has flourished during two hundred years, and has produced none of this levelling. The interval between a man of talents and a dunce is as wide as ever; and is never more clearly discernible than when they engage in researches which require the constant use of induction.

and carefully. His predecessors had been an. ticipators of nature. They had been content with first principles, at which they had arrived by the most scanty and slovenly induction. And why was this? It was, we conceive, because their philosophy proposed to itself no practical end, because it was merely an exercise of the mind. A man who wants to contrive a new machine or a new medicine has a strong motive to observe accurately and patiently, and to try experiment after experiment. But a man who merely wants a theme for disputation or declamation has no such motive. He is therefore content with premises grounded on assumption, or on the most scanty and hasty induction. Thus, we conceive, the schoolmen acted. On their foolish premises they often argued with great ability; and as their object was "assensum subjugare, non res

It will be seen that we do not consider Bacon's ingenious analysis of the inductive method as a very useful performance. Bacon was not, as we have already said, the inventor of the inductive method. He was not even the person who first analyzed the inductive method to be victorious in controversy, not to be correctly, though he undoubtedly analyzed it victorious over nature-they were consistent. more minutely than any who preceded him. For just as much logical skill could be shown He was not the person who first showed that in reasoning on false as on true premises. by the inductive method alone new truth could But the followers of the new philosophy, probe discovered. But he was the person who posing to themselves the discovery of useful first turned the minds of speculative men, truth as their object, must have altogether faillong occupied in verbal disputes, to the dis-ed of attaining that object, if they had been covery of new truth; and, by doing so, he at content to build theories on superficial indu once gave to the inductive method an import- tion. ance and dignity which had never before belonged to it. He was not the maker of that road; he was not the discoverer of that road; he was not the person who first surveyed and mapped that road. But he was the person who first called the public attention to an inexhaustible mine of wealth, which had been utterly neglected, and which was accessible by that road alone. By doing so, he caused that road which had previously been trodden only by peasants and higglers, to be frequented by a higher class of travellers.

That which was eminently his own in his system was the end which he proposed to himself. The end being given, the means, as it appears to us, could not well be mistaken. If others had aimed at the same object with Bacon, we hold it to be certain that they would have employed the same method with Bacon. It would have been hard to convince Seneca that the nventing of a safety-lamp was an employment worthy of a philosopher. It would have been hard to persuade Thomas Aquinas to descend from the making of syllogisms to the making of gunpowder. But Seneca would never have doubted for a moment that it was only by a series of experiments that a safetylamp could be invented. Thomas Aquinas would never have thought that his barbara and baralipton would enable him to ascertain the proportion which charcoal ought to bear to saltpetre in a pound of gunpowder. Neither common sense nor Aristotle would have suffered him to fall into such an absurdity.

By stimulating men to the discovery of new truth, Bacon stimulated them to employ the inductive method, the only method, even the ancient philosophers and the schoolmen themselves being judges, by which new truth can be discovered. By stimulating men to the discovery of useful truth, he furnished them with a motive to perform the inductive process well

Bacon has remarked† that in all ages when philosophy was stationary, the mechanical arts went on improving. Why was this? Evidently because the mechanic was not content with so careless a mode of induction as served the purpose of the philosopher. And why was the philosopher more easily satisfied than the mechanic? Evidently because the object of the mechanic was to mould things, whilst the object of the philosopher was only to mould words. Careful induction is not at all necessary to the making of a good syllogism. Bu: it is indispensable to the making of a good shoe. Mechanics, therefore, have always been, as far as the range of their humble but useful callings extended, not anticipators but interpreters of nature. And when a philosophy arose, the object of which was to do on a large scale what the mechanic does on a small scale

to extend the power and to supply the wants of man-the truth of the premises, which logically is a matter altogether unimportant, became a matter of the highest importance; and the careless induction with which men of learning had previously been satisfied, gave place, of necessity, to an induction far more accurate and satisfactory.

What Bacon did for the inductive philoso phy may, we think, be fairly stated thus. The objects of preceding speculators were objects which could be obtained without careful induction. Those speculators, therefore, did not perform the inductive process carefully. Bacon stirred up men to pursue an object which could be attained only by induction, and by induction carefully performed; and con sequently induction was more carefully performed. We do not think that the importance of what Bacon did for inductive philosophy

*Novum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 29.
+ De Augmentis, Lib. 1.

has ever been overrated. But we think that | lectual universe resembled that which the archthe nature of his services is often mistaken, angel, from the golden threshold of heaven, and was not fully understood even by himself. darted down into the new creation. It was not by furnishing philosophers with rules for performing the inductive process well, but by furnishing them with a motive for performing it well, that he conferred so vast a benefit on society.

To give to the human mind a direction which it shall retain for ages is the rare prerogative of a few imperial spirits. It cannot, therefore, be uninteresting to inquire, what was the moral and intellectual constitution which enabled Bacon to exercise so vast an influence on the world.

In the temper of Bacon-we speak of Bacon the philosopher, not of Bacon the lawyer and politician-there was a singular union of audacity and sobriety. The promises which he made to mankind might, to a superficial reader, seem to resemble the rants which a great dramatist has put into the mouth of an Oriental conqueror, half-crazed by good fortune and by violent passions:

"He shall have chariots easier than air,
Which I will have invented; and thyself
That art the messenger shall ride before him
On a horse cut out of an entire diamond,

That shall be made to go with golden wheels,
I know not how yet."

But Bacon performed what he promised. In
truth, Fletcher would not have dared to make
Arbaces promise, in his wildest fits of excite-
ment, the tithe of what the Baconian philoso-
phy has performed.

The true philosophical temperament may, we think, be described in four words-much hope, little faith; a disposition to believe that any thing, however extraordinary, may be done; an indisposition to believe that any thing extraordinary has been done. In these points the constitution of Bacon's mind seems to us to have been absolutely perfect. He was at once the Mammon and the Surly of his friend Ben. Sir Epicure did not indulge in visions more magnificent and gigantic. Surly did not sift evidence with keener and more sagacious incredulity.

Closely connected with this peculiarity of Bacon's temper was a striking peculiarity of his understanding. With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human being. The small fine mind of Labruyère had not a more delicate tact than the large intellect of Bacon. The "Essays" contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a courtinasque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the whole world of knowledge. His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed. Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady. Spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath its

shade.

In keenness of observation he has been equalled, thongh perhaps never surpassed. ba the largeness of his mind was all his own. The glauce with which he surveyed the intel

"Round he surveyed-and well might, where he stood
So high above the circling canopy

Of night's extended shade-from eastern point
Of Libra, to the fleecy star which bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
Beyond the horizon."

men as a Terrestrial Globe differs from an AtHis knowledge differed from that of other las which contains a different country on every leaf. The towns and roads of England, France, and Germany are better laid down in the atlas than in the globe. But while we are looking at England we see nothing of France; and while Germany. We may go to the atlas to learn we are looking at France we see nothing of the bearings and distances of York and Bristol, or of Dresden and Prague. But it is useless if we want to know the bearings and distances of France and Martinique, or of England and Canada. On the globe we shall not find all the market-towns in our own neighbourhood; but we shall learn from it the comparative extent and the relative position of all the kingdoms of the earth. "I have taken," said Bacon, in a letter written when he was only thirtyone, to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." In this would have been a ridiculous flight of preany other young man, indeed in any other man, sumption. There have been thousands of better mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, physicians, botanists, mineralogists, than Bacon. No man would go to Bacon's works to learn any particular science or art; any more than he would go to a twelve-inch globe in order to find his way from Kennington Turnpike to Clapham Common. The art which Bacon taught was the art of inventing arts. The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men, was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments of knowledge.

The mode in which he communicated his thoughts was exceedingly peculiar. He had no touch of that disputatious temper which he often censured in his predecessors. He effected a vast intellectual revolution in opposition to a vast mass of prejudices; yet he never engaged in any controversy; nay, we cannot at present recollect, in all his philosophical works, a single passage of a controversial character. All those works might with propriety have been put into the form which he adopted in the work entitled Cogitata et visa; "Franciscus Baconus sic cogitavit." These are thoughts which have occurred to me: weigh them well, and take them or leave them.

Borgia said of the famous expedition of Charles the Eighth, that the French had conquered Italy, not with steel, but with chalk ; for that the only exploit which they had found necessary for the purpose of taking military oc cupation of any place, had been to mark the doors of the houses where they meant to quarter. Bacon often quoted this saying, and loved to apply it to the victories of nis own inter lect. His philosophy, he said, came as a

* Novum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 35, and elsewhere

phical work of the nineteenth century is Mr.. Moore's "Lalla Rookh." The similitudes which we have cited are very happy similitudes. But that a man like Bacon should have taken them for more, that he should have thought the discovery of such resemblances as these an important part of philosophy, has always appeared to us one of the most singular facts in the history of letters.

guest, not as an enemy. She found no difficulty | factions. If this be indeed the philosophia prima. in obtaining admittance, without a contest, into we are quite sure that the greatest philosoevery understanding fitted, by its structure, and by its capacity, to receive her. In all this we think that he acted most judiciously; first, because, as he has himself remarked, the difference between his school and other schools was a difference so fundamental, that there was hardly any common ground on which a controversial battle could be fought; and, secondly, because his mind, eminently observant, pre-eminently discursive and capacious, was, we conceive, neither formed by nature, nor disciplined by habit, for dialectical combat.

Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric. His eloquence, though not untainted with the vicious taste of his age, would alone have entitled him to a high rank in literature. He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it portable.) In wit, if by wit be meant the power of perceiving analogies between things which appear to have nothing in common, he never had an equal-not even Cowley-not even the author of Hudibras. Indeed. he possessed this faculty, or rather this faculty possessed him, to a morbid degree. When he abandoned himself to it without reserve, as he did in the Sapientia Veterum, and at the end of the second book of the De Augmentis, the feats which he performed were not merely admirable, but portentous, and almost shocking. On those occasions we marvel at him as clowns on a fair-day marvel at a juggler, and can hardly help thinking that the devil must be in him.

These, however, were freaks in which his ingenuity now and then wantoned, with scarcely any other object than to astonish and amuse. But it occasionally happened that, when he was engaged in grave and profound investigations, his wit obtained the mastery over all his other faculties, and led him into absurdities into which no dull man could possibly have fallen. We will give the most striking instance which at present occurs to us. In the third book of the De Augmentis he tells us that there are some principles which are not peculiar to one science, but are common to several. That part of philosophy which concerns itself with these principles is, in his nomenclature, designated as philosophia prima. He then proceeds to mention some of the principles with which this philosophia prima is conversant. One of them is this: An infectious disease is more likely to be communicated while it is in progress than when it has reached its height. This, says he, is true in medicine. It is also true in morals; for we see that the example of very abandoned men injures public morality less than the example of men in whom vice has not yet extinguished all good qualities. Again, he tells us that in music a discord ending in a concord is agreeable, and that the same thing may be noted in the affections. Once more he tells us, that in physics the energy with which a principle acts is often increased by the antiperistasis of its opposite;

and that it is the same in the contests of

The truth is, that his mind was wonderfully quick in perceiving analogies of all sorts. But like several eminent men whom we could name, both living and dead, he sometimes appeared strangely deficient in the power of distinguishing rational from fanciful analogiesanalogies which are arguments from analo gies which are mere illustrations-analogies like that which Bishop Butler so ably pointed out between natural and revealed religion, from analogies like that which Addison discovered between the series of Grecian gods carved by Phidias, and the series of English kings painted by Kneller. This want of discrimination has led to many strange political speculations. Sir William Temple deduced a theory of government from the properties of the pyramid. Mr. Southey's whole system of finance is grounded on the phenomena of evaporation and rain. In theology this perverted ingenuity has made still wilder work. From the time of Irenæus and Origen, down to the present day, there has not been a single generation in which great divines have not been led into the most absurd expositions of Scrip ture, by mere incapacities to distinguish analogies proper, to use the scholastic phrase, from analogies metaphorical. It is curious that Bacon has himself mentioned this very kind of delusion among the idola specus; and has mentioned it in language which, we are inclined to think, indicates that he knew himself to be subject to it. It is the vice, he tells us, of subtle minds to attach too much importance to slight distinctions; it is the vice, on the other hand, of high and discursive intellects to attach too much importance to slight resemblances; and he adds, that when this last propensity is indulged to excess, it leads men to catch at shadows instead of substances.f

Yet we cannot wish that Bacon's wit had been less luxuriant. For, to say nothing of the pleasure which it affords, it was in the vast majority of cases employed for the purpose of making obscure truth plain, of making repulsive truth attractive, of fixing in the mind forever truth which might otherwise have made but a transient impression.

The poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon s mind; but not, like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason, and to tyrannize over the whole man. No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. It never stirred but a! a signal from good sense. It stopped at the

*See some interesting remarks on this subject in Bishop Berkeley's "Minute Philosopher." Dialogu

IV.

+ Novum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 55.

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