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 descriptions of the new method, will be divided into three partsthe 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 senses may be assisted; and the third, how to form a satisfactory collection of facts. then proposes to go on to the other two ministrations.

He

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 Organum,1 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 1 Nov. Org. ii. 10.

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 Naturæ Sententiæ Duodecim.1 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.2

(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 secundæ Delineatio, or in the De Interpretatione Naturæ Sententiæ Duodecim, although

1 Vide viii. of this tract.

2 Nov. Org. ii. 19.

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 historically, but in the dogmatic statement of his own view they are not introduced at all.1

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." 2 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

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

2 Val. Ter. c. 17.

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 white ness, 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