press 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 separates what Aristotle termed reéxea from mere motions or kungas, 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. may be asked, and the question is not easily answered, Of what use the study of concrete bodies was in Ba

It

con'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,1- 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.2

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 quoted; 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

1 For an explanation of which, see note on De Augmentis, iii. 4.-J. S. 2 See, in illustration of this, Nov. Org. ii. 5.

8 Vide supra, § 2.

according to the necessity of the case.

This being un

derstood, 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.1 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 tamen sit limitatio naturæ notioris instar generis veri."2 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 versa. 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 2 Nov. Org. ii. 4.

1 Nov. Org. ii. 4, 13, 16.

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 are 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 sim