method "exæquat ingenia," "cùm omnia per certissimas regulas et demonstrationes transigat."

in

(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 place of 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 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 contentio. . . . Verùm cùm per nos illud agatur, ut alia omnino via intellectui aperiatur illis intentata et incognita, commutata tota jam. ratio est," &c. He elsewhere speaks of himself as being "in hâc re plane protopirus, et vestigia nullius sequutus. 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 his 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 1 Nov. Org. i. 113.

VOL. I.

5

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 disappear.1

(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 recognise 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 Philosophy, which is in many respects the best commentary on Bacon, we find it asserted that in the pursuit of

1 See, for instance, the Præfatio 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."

2 Published posthumously in 1705.

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."1 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 recog

nised.

(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

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

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. Datæ autem naturæ formam, sive differentiam veram, sive naturam naturantem, sive fontem emanationis, (ista enim vocabula habemus quæ ad indicationem rei proxime accedunt) invenire, opus et intentio est humanæ scientiæ." 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; and in the Novum Organum he has expressed an equivalent

1 Mr. Ellis alludes, I think, to the De Interpretatione Naturæ Sententiæ 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.

opinion:"quòd iste modus operandi, (qui naturas intuetur simplices licet in corpore concreto) procedat ex iis quæ in naturâ sunt constantia et æterna et catholica, et latas præbeat potentiæ humanæ vias." 1 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, of 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."

1 Nov. Org. ii. 5.