(for it is no more than a Preface), Bacon declares that a compromise between the New and Old Philosophy is not unjustifiable, at least thus far: A man of average ability may investigate the secrets of Nature without the exact use of the Organum, if he will but cast aside the Idols and study things instead of books. Such a student may lay more successful siege to Nature than the mere reader of books, even though the former has not employed the regular engines of war (machinas non admoverit) nor followed the Rule of Interpretation. Much more is it lawful for him to entertain this hope about himself, since his mind has been strengthened by the practice and exercise of interpreting Nature. Yet he will not bind himself by these anticipations, but will reserve everything for the final decision of the Second and Inductive Philosophy; and he will set them forth sparsely, not connectedly, because this method is most suitable for fresh-sprung and budding sciences.1 Thus, with a Preface, and an unfulfilled intention, ends the Magna Instauratio. § 57 THE MERITS AND DEMERITS OF BACON'S PHILOSOPHY As to the demerits of Bacon's Philosophy there is a general agreement, so far as this, that it has been of no direct use in making discoveries. Modern Science recognizes as an effectual aid in research the "working hypothesis" which Bacon is generally said to ignore. Yet even in some of his earlier teatises, he accepts a Provisional Table which was to prepare the way for the New Table (Chartae Novellae); and the same tendency may be discerned in the Prima Vindemiatio, or Permissio Intellectus (see p. 393) as well as in the Provisional Rules (Mobiles Canones, see p. 401) and in the Anticipationes Secundae Philosophiae. In his later works, at all events (as for example in the Historia Vitae et Mortis) he seems to recognize the utility or necessity of provisional hypotheses. We have also seen in the extract from the Prodromi quoted in the last paragraph that the Instauratio Magna closes with a recognition of the occasional utility of this 1 Spedding, Works, ii. 690-692. 2 See the summary of the Delineatio, twelfth para raph, p. 359, above. irregularity. No doubt, in his Astronomical treatises, he inveighs against all astronomical hypotheses, even against that of Copernicus. But there was much excuse for such invective. The Introduction to the Copernican Astronomy itself declared not only that the Copernican system was hypothetical, but also that in astronomy no absolute truth could be expected;1 and it was against this habit of despair in Science that Bacon principally directed his attacks. It must be admitted, however, that generally Bacon does not sufficiently recognize the necessity of some guiding conception (of the nature of a hypothesis) in selecting phenomena from the first. A more serious objection is, that he starts with, and never consciously divests himself of, a prejudice in favour of the simplicity of Nature, disposing him to exaggerate the facility of its analysis. He believes for example that the surest way to make gold is to ascertain the causes of its qualities, viz., weight, colour, closeness of parts, pliancy, freedom from rust, together with the Axioms that concern those Causes, and then it is only necessary to superinduce these qualities upon any nature in order to transform that nature to gold. His theory is that Nature speaks, as it were, a language of an infinite vocabulary, but of a limited alphabet. Master the alphabet, and you can reproduce the countless variations of the words. This is the problem stated in the Valerius Terminus, and, so stated, it seems easy of solution. But it has been pointed out by Dr. Whewell that, instead of investigating simple natures, modern discoverers have succeeded by investigating the Laws of special phenomena. Thus, instead of investigating Heat, men of science have studied the Laws of Conduction, Radiation, Specific Heat, Latent Heat; then have followed hypotheses about Heat itself, which have been verified, amended, and finally adopted. Subsequently Bacon became aware that it is not so easy to form a right conception of a single letter of Nature's Alphabet. Our very notions of "simple natures" are often wrong and require correction. Hence in the Partis Secundae Delineatio he had awakened to the necessity of the task of constructing a bona notio, or right conception of a simple nature. This task 1 See above, p. 374. was to have been performed in the Novum Organum, as it was then designed; and the omission of it indicates that Bacon found it impossible. At the time of writing the Novum Organum he seems to have perceived that the formation of a bona notio and the establishment of an Axiom were so closely intertwined that the one could not be presented independently of the other and his view now became, that at first Axioms must be established by means of the commonly received conceptions, and subsequently these conceptions must be rectified by means of the ulterior aids to the mind (the fortiora auxilia in usum intellectus) which he promises in the nineteenth Aphorism of the Second Book of the Novum Organum, but never actually gives. But, with this failure, there falls at once the chief claim of the New Philosophy, the claim of the New Instrument to be (like the compasses in the hand of an inferior draughtsman) unerring in its operation, even when employed by an operator of only average ability. These then appear the two internal causes of the failure of Bacon's Natural Philosophy; first, the undue neglect of the use of the Imagination in scientific research, secondly, a prejudice in favour of a particular kind of simplicity in Nature. But a third charge has been in times past frequently, and is still occasionally, brought against the Baconian philosophy; it is accused of being vulgarly "utilitarian," devoted to the material utilities of men. This charge, thus worded, is easily refuted. No reader of the Advancement of Learning, or even of the brief summary of it given further on,1 can deny that Bacon "took all Nature for his province," not material nature merely, but human nature also with its faculties, the memory, the will, the imagination. It is true indeed that he gives little attention to the discussion --and probably he had not much fitness or ability for the discussion of those fundamental conceptions which have dazzled and attracted many so-called philosophers from the time when philosophy began, such as Time, Space, Necessity, Free Will, Cause, Effect, and the like. And, as to the investigation of Final Causes, he used a language of deprecation which Pope perhaps had in his mind when he described a Philosophy of 1 See Appendix II. pp. 461-475. "Second Causes" as forerunning the Advent of the Goddess of Dulness: "Philosophy, that leaned on Heav'n before, But at least a Baconian may reply not only that the so-called philosophical discussions of these primary notions have been barren, but also that the Baconian philosophy itself has indirectly illustrated them. Our conceptions of Time and Space, for example, have been amplified and ennobled far more by the Newtonian Philosophy of "second causes "—which has led us to the knowledge of stars so remote that centuries elapse before a ray from them can reach us-than by whole disquisitions on the mere meaning or origin of the notions Space and Time. And the same may be said, when Bacon is charged with a loose and superficial treatment of questions bearing on human nature. Certainly he has not put forth much that was new, nor has he even collected much that was old and worth collecting; but he has at least warned us off from trespassing on the pleasant paths of Cloudland speculators, the inventors of names without meanings, the hair-splitting discriminators, the cobweb-theory spinners; he has set up a finger-post pointing to the poets, the historians, and the physicians,—in other words to the records of the facts of human nature, when human nature is surrounded by the most various circumstances and subjected to the most various tests,—as being a more promising source whence we may hope to gain some fresh knowledge as to what we are, and how we may be made better than we are. Physical Science, with Bacon, rises to the level of a Religion. It is God's will that His Laws should be discovered by the faculties which He Himself has given to men. The discovery of these Laws would no doubt result in the increase of the material powers and comforts of men; but the discovery in itself seemed to Bacon a great and holy work, as being an exercise of God-given faculties in the way in which God intended them to be exercised. Not only therefore pity for men, but also allegiance to God stimulates him on the path of investigation. The errors of the ancient philosophers, their brain-creations, and power-displays, their "invented systems of the Universe like so many arguments of plays," their elegant philosophies, "out of the cells, each of his own imagination, as out of Plato's cave," 1 are all, in Bacon's estimation, not mere errors, but almostnow, at all events, when the mischief of their errors has been revealed-of the nature of sins. They wished For we create "We copy the sin of our first parents while we suffer for it. to be like God, but their posterity wish to be even greater. worlds, we direct and domineer over nature, we will have it that all things are as in our folly we think they should be, not as seems fittest to the Divine wisdom, or as they are found to be in fact; and I know not whether we more distort the facts of nature or of our own wits; but we clearly impress the stamp of our own image on the creatures and works of God, instead of carefully examining and recognizing in them the stamp of the Creator himself. Wherefore our dominion over creatures is a second time forfeited, not undeservedly; and whereas after the fall of man some power over the resistance of creatures was still left to him-the power of subduing and managing them by true and solid arts-yet this too through our insolence, and because we desire to be like God and to follow the dictates of our own reason, we in great part lose. "If, therefore, there be any humility towards the Creator, any reverence for, or disposition to magnify, His works, any charity for man and anxiety to relieve his sorrows and necessities, any love of truth in nature, any hatred of darkness, any desire for the purification of the understanding, we must entreat men again and again to discard, or at least banish for a while, these volatile and preposterous philosophies which have preferred theses to hypotheses, led experience captive, and triumphed over the works of God. Drawing nigh in all humility and reverence they must unroll the volume of Creation; thereon must they dwell and meditate; this must they peruse purely and sincerely with minds washed clean from preconceived opinions. For this is that sound and language which 'went forth into all lands,' and did not incur the confusion of Babel; this should men study to be perfect in, and, becoming again as little children, condescend to take the alphabet of it into their hands, and spare no pains to search and unravel the interpretation thereof, but pursue it strenuously and persevere even unto death."2 The study of Physical Science, pursued in this spirit and with these objects, can hardly be described as vulgarly utilitarian or as ministering to the merely material wants of men. About the merits of Bacon's philosophy there is not the same agreement as about the demerits. Some have asserted, and not without show of reason, that whereas Bacon's system was, according to his own account, quite new, it is in reality, so far as 1 The Phenomena of the Universe, Works, v. 131. 2 Ib. 131-133, and ii. 14-15. |