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man the intellectual light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and govern this work, which coming from thy goodness, returneth to thy glory. Thou, after thou hadst reviewed the works which thy hands had made, beheldest that everything was very good, and thou didst rest with complacency in them. But man, reflecting on the works which he had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could by no means acquiesce in them. Wherefore, if we labour in thy

works with the sweat of our brows, thou wilt make us partakers of thy vision and thy Sabbath. We humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly in us; and that thou, by our hands, and also by the hands of others on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please to convey a largess of new alms to thy family of mankind. These things we commend to thy everlasting love, by our Jesus, thy Christ, God with us. Amen."

CHAPTER XVI.

ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON FRANCIS BACON.

FRANCIS Bed and examined by various writers

RANCIS BACON and his works have recently

in France and Germany as well as England'. Not to mention smaller essays, M. Bouillet has published a valuable edition of his philosophical works; Count Joseph de Maistre wrote a severe critique of his philosophy, which has been published since the death of the author; M. Charles Remusat has written a lucid and discriminating Essay on the subject; and in England we have had a new edition of the works published, with a careful and thoughtful examination of the philosophy which they contain, written by one of the editors: a person especially fitted for such an examination by an acute intellect, great acquaintance with philosophical literature, and a wide knowledge of modern science. Robert Leslie Ellis, the editor of whom I speak, died during the publication of the edition, and before he had done full justice to his powers; but he had already written various dissertations on Bacon's philosophy, which accompany the different Treatises in the new edition.

Mr. Ellis has given a more precise view than any of his predecessors had done of the nature of Bacon's

1 Euvres Philosophiques de Bacon, &c. par M. N. Bouillet, 3 Tomes.

Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon (Euvres Posthumes du Comte J. de Maistre).

Bacon, sa Vie, son Temps, sa Philosophie, par Charles de Remusat.

Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages

de François Bacon, par J. B. de Vaugelles.

Franz Baco von Verulam, von Kuno Fischer.

The Works of Francis Bacon, collected and edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath.

induction and of his philosophy of discovery. Bacon's object was to discover the 'natures' or essences of things, in order that he might reproduce these natures or essences at will; he conceived that these natures were limited in number, and manifested in various combinations in the bodies which exist in the universe; so that by accumulating observations of them in a multitude of cases, we may learn by induction in what they do and in what they do not consist; the Induction which is to be used for this purpose consists in a great measure of excluding the cases which do not exhibit the 'nature' in question; and by such exclusion, duly repeated, we have at last left in our hands the elements of which the proposed nature consists. And the knowledge which is thus obtained may be applied to reproduce the things so analysed. As exhibiting this view clearly we may take a passage in the Sylva Sylvarum: "Gold 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 no." He means that however they dispute, it is gold for all practical purposes.

For such an Induction as this, Bacon claims the merit both of being certain, and of being nearly independent of the ingenuity of the inquirer. It is a method which enables all men to make exact discoveries, as a pair of compasses enables all men to draw an exact circle.

Now it is necessary for us, who are exploring the progress of the true philosophy of discovery, to say plainly that this part of Bacon's speculation is erroneous and valueless. No scientific discovery ever has been made in this way. Men have not obtained truths concerning the natural world by seeking for the natures of things, and by extracting them from phenomena by rejecting the cases in which they were not.

On the contrary, they have begun by ascertaining the laws of the phenomena; and have then gone on, not by a mechanical method which levels all intellect, but by special efforts of the brightest intellects to catch hold of the ideas by which these laws of phenomena might be interpreted and expressed in more general terms. These two steps, the finding the laws of phenomena, and finding the conceptions by which those laws can be expressed, are really the course of discovery, as the history of science exhibits it to us.

Bacon, therefore, according to the view now presented, was wrong both as to his object and as to his method. He was wrong in taking for his object the essences of things,-the causes of abstract properties: for these man cannot, or can very rarely discover; and all Bacon's ingenuity in enumerating and classifying these essences and abstract properties has led, and could lead, to no result. The vast results of modern science have been obtained, not by seeking and finding the essences of things, but by exploring the laws of phenomena and the causes of those laws.

And Bacon's method, as well as his object, is vitiated by a pervading error:-the error of supposing that to be done by method which must be done by mind;-that to be done by rule which must be done by a flight beyond rule; that to be mainly negative which is eminently positive;-that to depend on other men which must depend on the discoverer himself;-that to be mere prose which must have a dash of poetry ;that to be a work of mere labour which must be also a work of genius.

Mr. Ellis has seen very clearly and explained very candidly that this method thus recommended by Bacon has not led to discovery. "It is," he says, "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."

As the reader of the last chapter will see, this amounts to much the same as the account which I

had given of the positive results of Bacon's method, and the real value of that portion of his philosophy which he himself valued most. But still there remain, as I have also noted, portions of Bacon's speculations which have a great and enduring value, namely, his doctrine that Science is the Interpretation of Nature, his distinction of this Interpretation of Nature from the vicious and premature Anticipation of Nature which had generally prevailed till then; and the recommendation of a graduated and successive induction by which alone the highest and most general truths were to be reached. These are points which he urges with great clearness and with great earnestness; and these are important points in the true philosophy of discovery.

I may add that Mr. Ellis agrees with me in noting the invention of the conception by which the laws of phenomena are interpreted as something additional to Induction, both in the common and in the Baconian sense of the word. He says (General Preface, Art. 9), "In all cases this process [scientific discovery] involves an element to which nothing corresponds in the Tables of Comparence and Exclusion; namely the application to the facts of a principle of arrangement, au idea, existing in the mind of the discoverer antecedently to the act of induction." It may be said that this principle or idea is aimed at in the Baconian analysis. "And this is in one sense true: but it must be added, that this analysis, if it be thought right to call it so, is of the essence of the discovery which results from it. To take for granted that it has been already 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." And as an example he takes Kepler's invention of the ellipse, as the idea by which Mars's motions could be reduced to law; making the same use of this example which we have repeatedly made of it.

Mr. Ellis may at first sight appear to express himself more favourably than I have done, with regard to

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