Cupid; some with a veil (those who explain everything by the transformations of one element, water for example); others with a tunic (those who assume a plurality of elements); others with a cloak (those who assume an infinity of first principles each possessed of specific properties). Contrasted with these false doctrines is the true one, that there is one first, fixed, and invariable material principle. Then follows an exposition of the doctrine of those who have "clothed Cupid," most space being devoted to the doctrine of Parmenides revived by Telesius, viz., that there are two principles of things.

Of this unfinished tract Mr. Ellis says that it shows Bacon to have obtained a deep insight into the principles of the atomic theory which in his hands becomes a theory of forces only, "much like the theory of Boscovich, who considered that all phenomena might be explained (without matter) on the hypothesis of the existence of a number of centres of force." Probably it was of some of the sayings in this treatise that Leibnitz remarked, "We do well to think highly of Verulam ; for his hard sayings have a deep meaning in them."

If Bacon was guided sometimes wisely by his intuitions in large scientific conjectures as to first principles and possible laws, it must be admitted that in the attempt to form theories on special subjects he was not equally happy; and in many cases he was led away by inexcusable error and inaccuracy. Of this an example is furnished by his treatise on the Flux and Reflux of the Sea (written probably a little before 1612).1 In extenuation of his errors we must remember that in those days the connection between the moon and the tides, though recognised, was not clearly understood, and that no sufficient distinction was made between the undulatory motion of stationary water and the progressive motion of water. Hence Telesius compared the sea to a cauldron which boiled over (thus causing the tides) when heated by the sun, moon, and stars. Bacon's theory was based on the fixed and the stars moved westward. except the earth, had some westward the stars moved quickest; the higher planets less quickly; the moon less quickly than any of the planets: and the water least

belief that the earth was Assuming that all things, motion, he supposed that

1 Spedding, Works, iii. 39-64.

quickly of all, thus lagging behind the moon. The motions of ebb and flow he explains from the configuration of the earth; and his whole theory depends upon the supposition that the tides of the Pacific do not synchronize with those of the Atlantic. It is one of the most remarkable instances of his extraordinary carelessness that, to establish this fact-the key-stone of his theory-he quotes an author (Acosta), who, on the contrary, asserts that the tides do synchronize.

Still more unfortunate are Bacon's attempts at Astronomy. In 1612 he published a Description of the World of Thought (Descriptio Globi Intellectualis).1 Dismissing (perhaps as being only fit for a popular and preliminary treatise), the triple division of history in the Advancement of Learning (into ecclesiastical, civil, and natural), he divides history more scientifically (as he does also subsequently in the De Augmentis) into natural and civil; and then, having stated the divisions of Natural History, he devotes the rest of the tract to one of these divisions, the History of Celestial Things, i.e. Astronomy. To this treatise is added another (Thema Coeli), containing Bacon's own provisional theory of Astronomy.2

The work is chiefly remarkable for its neglect of recent astronomical discoveries. He indeed refers briefly to Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's satellites (published together with other discoveries in the Sydereus Nuncius, 1611), but he does not appear to have seen its importance in confirming the theory of Copernicus; and concerning Kepler's Laws (two of which had been published in the De Stella Martis in 1609, and had become known in England in 1610), he is entirely silent. Yet, if he had taken the trouble to make himself acquainted with them (or rather if the occupations of a Solicitor-General aspiring to the place of AttorneyGeneral, had left him leisure for astronomical studies), the adoption by Kepler of the ellipse, as the celestial curve, would have rendered Bacon's complaint at once superfluous and false, that all astronomers alike are prejudiced in favour of the circle as being the only perfect curve, and alone fit for celestial motions.

Nevertheless, there is more excuse than is immediately apparent for Bacon's sweeping condemnation of all existing systems of Astronomy. No system could be called consistent or complete 1 Spedding, Works, iii. 727-768.

2 Ibid. iii. 769-779.

till Newton discovered the Law of Gravitation. The Ptolemaic system itself, with its eccentrics and epicycles, was inconsistent with the strict Aristotelian Philosophy, which required all celestial motions to be simple and concentric; and it was therefore, by some philosophers, accepted only as a hypothesis, "saving the phenomena," while the more zealous Aristotelians rejected it with contempt.

Copernicus himself advocated his own system merely as a hypothesis; and in his works the term "Demonstrations" meant, not that certain causes did cause, but only that they could cause, certain phenomena. The introduction (erroneously attributed to Copernicus himself), which prefaces his great work on the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs says, "It is not necessary that hypotheses should be true or even probable; it is sufficient that they lead to results of calculation which agree with observations. . . . . . Neither let any one, so far as hypotheses are concerned, expect anything certain from Astronomy; since science can afford nothing of the kind." The obvious question, "Why should celestial bodies move in recurring orbits, and terrestrial bodies otherwise?" could not be answered by Copernicus. Nor could he answer another question of which any child could see the force: "If the earth is moving round at the rate of several hundred miles an hour eastward, how is it that a stone thrown straight up from the earth into the air does not fall down on the earth at a considerable distance westward of the spot where it left the earth?"-to which his only reply was that "perhaps the air carried the stone onward." The failure to answer these two questions condemned his astronomy as hypothetical. Hence Ramus, the logician, had (like Bacon) treated the Copernican system as a mere hypothesis, and had offered to resign his professorship in favour of any one who could produce an "astronomy without hypotheses;" and it is creditable to Bacon's faith in the uniformity of nature, that he predicted that future discoveries would rest "upon observation of the common passions and desires of matter"-an anticipation of Newton's law of attraction.

But there is nothing Newtonian in the theory of his own, which he proceeds to elaborate. Making earth the centre of his system, he assumes that, the further one proceeds from earth, the

more does the atmosphere become, not only rarified, but also adapted to be the home of the flamy substance of which the stars are supposed to consist. In the earthly atmosphere flame cannot exist without support; as we leave the earth, the air becomes rarer and flame acquires consistency, first in the comets, next in the body of the moon, where flame, though still weak, ceases to be extinguishable; thence, as we go still further, the flame increases in strength and purity until, in the planets Jupiter and Saturn, it begins to be exhausted by the proximity to the sidereal element.1 Finally, all planetary form is swallowed up in a region of unmixed flame. Thus there are three regions: 1st, the region of the extinction of flame; 2nd, the region of its union; 3rd, the region of its dispersion.

Next as to celestial motions. Since rest must not be taken out of nature, and since compactness of matter (such as we find in the terrene globe), induces aversion 2 to motion, it is reasonable to look for rest in the earth if anywhere. But if there is perfect rest, we must suppose there is also perfect mobility; and those bodies which are furthest from the earth will be most perfectly mobile. Accordingly, the further planets are from the earth, the more quickly they move (regard being had to the magnitude of their orbits); and whereas the orbits of the most remote approximate to circles, those of the nearest are spirals differing most from circles; "for in proportion as substances degenerate in purity and freedom of development, so do their motions degenerate." A protest follows against present astronomical systems: "As for the hypotheses of astronomers it is useless to refute them, because they are not themselves asserted as true; and they may be various and contrary one to the other, yet so as equally to save and adjust the phenomena." The treatise concludes thus: "These then are the things that I see, standing as I do on the threshold of natural history and philosophy; and it may be that, the deeper a man has gone into natural history, the more he will approve them."

The principal reason for disinterring these well-nigh forgotten

1 “In Saturni autem regione rursus natura flammae videtur nonnihil languescere et hebescere; utpote et a solis auxiliis longius remota, et a coelo stellato in proximo exhausta." Spedding, Works, iii. 771.

2 The reader will not fail to notice how Bacon here and elsewhere succumbs to the power of words such as "appetite," "aversion," "nature" and the like-the very Idols against which he had so passionately protested.

treatises is because they illustrate in a very remarkable way the confidence which induced their Author, amid a multitude of engrossing occupations, to write in a tone of authority on a subject of which he himself knew so very little as not even to be able to appreciate the discoveries made by his contemporaries. During the rest of his life, immersed in State trials and attempts at politics, he was not destined to find leisure to supply his astronomical deficiencies; and accordingly we find that, the older he grew, the firmer became his conviction that the new belief in the rotation of the earth was false. In the treatise on the Flux and Reflux of the Sea, he merely notices the belief as "somewhat arbitrarily devised, so far as concerns physical reasons;" in the Thema Coeli (1612), he says that he now inclines to the theory of fixity (" which I now think to be the truer opinion"); but in the third book of the De Augmentis (1623), he is certain that the theory of the earth's motion is absolutely false (nobis constat falsissimum esse).1

At this point there is a great gap in the series of Bacon's Philosophical works. In 1613 he was appointed AttorneyGeneral, and from that time till 1620, the year before his downfall, no literary work of any kind published, or unpublished, is known to have issued from his pen. All that he did was apparently to re-write repeatedly and revise the Novum Organum, which now claims attention.

§ 53 THE "NOVUM ORGANUM" (BOOK I) 2

Fifteen years after the publication of the Advancement of Learning (which might serve as a first part of his Magna Instauratio) Bacon published (1620) the Key of the Interpretation of Nature, or, as he now preferred to call it, the Novum Organum (New Instrument), which was to serve as the second part of his great work.

1 In the Praise of Knowledge (1592) he perhaps condemns the Copernican theory: "Who would not smile at the astronomers, I mean not these new carmen which drive the earth about, but the ancient astronomers, which feign, &c." (Spedding, i. 124); and in the Temporis Partus Masculus he includes the Copernicans in his general condemnation of astronomical hypotheses; "Seest thou not, my son, that alike these feigners of eccentrics and epicycles, and these carmen of the earth, delight in pleading the doubtful evidence of phenomena?" (Works, iii. 536).

Spedding, Works, i. 71-223.