3dly. By explaining the mode in which the facts presented to the senses ought by certain rules to be examined. As the commander of an army, before he commences an attack, considers the strength and number of his troops, both regular and allies; the spirit by which they are animated, whether they are the lion, or the sheep in the lion's skin; the power of the enemy to which he is opposed: their walled towns, their stored arsenals and armories, their horses and chariots of war, elephants, ordnance and artillery, and their races of men; and then in what mode he shall commence his attack and proceed in the battle: so, before man directs his strength against nature, and endeavours to take her high towers and dismantle her fortified holds, and thus enlarge the borders of his dominion, he ought duly to estimate, 1st. His powers, natural and artificial, for the discovery of truth. With respect to the defects of the senses, h says that things escape their cognisance by seven modes: 1st. From distance; which is remedied by substitutes, as beacons, bells, telegraphs, &c. 2d. By the interception of interposing bodies; which is remedied by attention to outward or visible signs, as the internal state of the body by the pulse, &c. 3d. By the unfitness of the body: or, 4th. Its insufficiency in quantity to impress the sense, as the air and the vital spirit, which is imperceptible by sight or touch. 5th. From the insufficiency of time to actuate the sense, either when the motion is too slow, as in the hand of a clock or the growth of grass, or too rapid, as a bullet passing through the air. 6th. From the percussion of the body being too powerful for the sense, as in looking at the midday sun; which is remedied by removing the object from the sense; or by diminishing its force by the interposition of a medium, as smoking tobacco through water; or by reflection, as the sun's rays in a mirror or basin of water: and7th. Because the sense is pre-occupied by another object, as by the use of perfumes. The defects of the judgment he investigates 2d. His different motives for the exercise of in a more laborious inquiry. "There are," he his powers. says, "certain predispositions which beset the 3d. The obstacles to which he is opposed; mind of man; certain idols which are constantly and, 4th. The mode in which he can exert his powers with most efficacy, or the Art of Invention. Of these four requisites, therefore, a perfect work upon the conduct of the understanding ought, as it seems, to consist: but the Novum Organum is not thus treated. To system Bacon was not attached: for "As young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a farther stature, so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth; but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be farther polished and illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance. Instead of explaining our different powers, our Senses, our Imagination, our Reason, there are in the Novum Organum only some scattered observations upon the defects of the senses;-upon the different causes or idols by which the judgment is always liable to be warped, and some suggestions as to the artificial helps to our natural powers in exploring the truths which are exhibited to the senses. operating upon the mind and warping it from the truth; for the mind of man, drawn over and clouded with the sable pavilion of the body, is so far from being like smooth, equal, and clear glass, which might sincerely take and reflect the beams of things according to their true incidence, that it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstitions, apparitions, and impostures; which idols are of such a pernicious nature, that, if they once take root in the mind, they will so possess it that truth can hardly find entrance; and, even should it enter, they will again rise up, choke, and destroy it.' These idols are of two sorts: 1st. Common to all men, therefore called Idols of the Tribe, including the defects of words, called Idols of the Market; 2d. Peculiar to peculiar individuals, either from their original conformation, or from their education and pursuits in life, called Idols of the Den, including the errors from particular opinions, called Idols of the Theatre. So that his doctrine of idols may be thus exhibited: 1. Of the Tribe.-Of the Market 2. Of the Den.-Of the Theatre. The Idols of the Tribe, or warps to the judgment, Idols of the Theatre, or depraved theories, are, of course, infinite and inveterate; appearing in that numerous litter of strange, senseless, absurd opinions, which crawl about the world to the disgrace of reason, and the wretchedness of mankind. by which all mankind swerve from the truth, are | ticians, &c., to their respective sciences, are glar of two classes: 1st. When man is under the in- ing instances. fluence of a passion more powerful than the love of truth, as worldly interest, crying "Great is Diana of the Ephesians:” or, 2dly, When,under the influence of the love of truth, he, like every lover, is hurried without due and cautious inquiry by the hope of possessing the object of his affections; which manifests itself either in hasty assent, or hasty generalization, the parents of credulity :—in tenacity in retaining opinions, the parent of prejudice :-in abandoning universality, the parent of feeble inquiry :--or in indulging in subtleties and refinements and endless inquiry, the parent of vain speculations, spinning out of itself cobwebs of learning, admirable for their fineness of texture, but of no substance or profit. Upon the destruction of these idols, Bacon is "They must," unceasing in his exhortations. he says, “by the lover of truth be solemnly and forever renounced, that the understanding may be purged and cleansed; for the kingdom of man, which is founded in the sciences, can scarce be entered otherwise than the Kingdom of God, that is, in the condition of little children :" and, with an earnestness not often found in his works, he adds, “If we have any humility towards the Creator; if we have any reverence and esteem of his works; if we have any charity towards men, or any desire of relieving their miseries and ne As men associate by discourse, and words are imposed according to the capacity of the vulgar, a false and improper imposition of words unavoidably possesses the understanding, leading men away to idle controversies and subtleties, irreme-cessities; if we have any love for natural truths; diable by definitions, which, consisting of words, shoot back, like the Tartar's bow, upon the Judgment from whence they came. These defects of words, or Idols of the Market, are either names of non-existences, as the primum mobile, the element of fire, &c.; or confused names of existences, as beauty, virtue, &c.; which, from the subtlety of nature being infinite, and of words finite, must always exist. Words tell the minutes, but not the seconds. When we attempt to reach heaven, we are stopped by the confusion of languages. any aversion to darkness, any desire of purifying the understanding, we must destroy these idols, which have led experience captive, and childishly triumphed over the works of God; and now at length condescend, with due submission and veneration, to approach and peruse the volume of the creation; dwell some time upon it, and bringing to the work a mind well purged of opinions, idols, and false notions, converse familiarly therein. This volume is the language which has gone out to all the ends of the earth, unaffected by the confusion of Babel; this is the language that men should thoroughly learn, and not disdain to have the interpretation of this language they should spare no pains, but strenuously proceed, persevere, and dwell upon it to the last.” Such is a faint outline of Bacon's celebrated doctrine of idols, which has sometimes been supposed to be the most important of all his works, and to expose the cause of all the errors by which man is misled. The Idols of the Den, or attachment by particular individuals to particular opinions, he thus ex-its alphabet perpetually in their hands; and in plains: "We every one of us have our particular den or cavern, which refracts and corrupts the light of nature; either because every man has his respective temper, education, acquaintance, course of reading, and authorities; or from the difference of impressions, as they happen in a mind prejudiced or prepossessed, or in one that is calm and equal. Of which defects Plato's cave is an excellent emblem: for, certainly, if a man were continued from his childhood to mature age in a grotto or dark and subterraneous cave, and then should come suddenly abroad, and should behold the stately canopy of heaven and the furniture of the world, without doubt he would have many strange and absurd imaginations come into his mind and people his brain. So in like manner we live in the view of heaven, yet our spirits are enclosed in the caves of our bodies, complexions, and customs, which must needs minister unto us infinite images of error and vain opinions, if they do seldom and for so short a time appear above ground out of their holes, and do not continually live under the contemplation of nature, as in the open air." Of these Idols of the Den, the attachment of professional men, divines, lawyers, poli Upon the motives by which the lover of truth, seeking nature with all her fruits about her, can alone be actuated, and which he has explained in other parts of his works, he, in the Novum Organum, contents himself with saying, "We would in general admonish all to consider the true ends of knowledge, and not to seek it for the gratification of their minds, or for disputation, or that they may despise others, or for emolument, or fame, or power, or such low objects, but for its intrinsic merit and the purposes of life." The obstacles to the are: 1. Want of time, 2. Want of means. acquisition of knowledge 1. Worldly occupation Upon the obstacles from want of time, more imaginary than real, if time is not wasted in frivolous pursuits, in sensuality or in sleep, in misapplication of times of recreation, or in idle curiosity, the Novum Organum contains but one casual, consolatory observation: "We judge also that mankind may conceive some hopes from our example, which we offer, not by way of ostentation, but because it may be useful." The obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge from want of means he through life deeply felt, and he never omitted an opportunity earnestly to express his hope that it would be diminished or destroyed by such a collection of natural history as would show the world, not as man has made it, not as it exists only in imagination, but as it really exists, as God has made it. his astonishment that no mortal should have taken care to open and prepare a way for the human understanding, from sense and a well-conducted experience, but that all things should be left either to the darkness of tradition, the giddy agitation and whirlwind of argument, or else to the uncertain waves of accident, or a vague and uninformed experience. To open this way, to discover how our reason shall be guided, that it may be right, that it be not a blind guide, but direct us to the place where the star appears, and point us to the very place where the babe lieth, is the great object of this inquiry. As our opinions are formed by impressions made upon our senses, by confidence in the communications of others, and by our own meditations, man, in the infancy of his reason, is unavoidably in error: for, although our senses never deceive us, the communications made by others, and our own speculations must, according to the ignorance of our teachers, and the liveliness of our own imaginations, teem with error. Bacon saw the evil, and he saw the remedy: he saw and taught his contemporaries and future ages, that reasoning is nothing worth, except as it is founded on facts. Anxious to lay the true foundation of philosophy, he, in the Novum Organum, availed himself of the power with which he was intrusted, to induce the king to form such a collection of natural history as he had measured out in his mind, and such as really ought to be procured; "a great and royal work, requiring the purse of a prince and the assistance of a people." He, therefore, in the dedication, and in his presentation letter, urged the king to imitate Solomon, by procuring In his Sylva Sylvarum, he thus speaks: "The the compilation and completion of such a natural philosophy of Pythagoras, which was full of and experimental history as should be serviceable superstition, did first plant a monstrous imaginafor raising the superstructure of philosophy: that, tion, which afterwards was, by the school of Plato at length, after so many ages, philosophy and the and others, watered and nourished. It was, that sciences may no longer be unsettled and specula- the world was one entire, perfect, living creature; tive, but fixed on the solid foundation of a varied that the ebbing and flowing of the sea was the and well-considered experience: and in his reply respiration of the world, drawing in water as to the king's acknowledgment of the receipt of breath, and putting it forth again. They went on the Novum Organum, he repeats his hope that and inferred, that if the world were a living creathe king will aid him in employing the commu- ture, it had a soul and spirit. This foundation nity in collecting a natural and experimental his- being laid, they might build upon it what they tory, as "basis totius negotii; for who can tell, would; for in a living creature, though never so now this mine of truth is opened, how the veins great, as, for example, in a great whale, the sense, go, and what lieth higher, and what lieth lower?" and the effects of any one part of the body, Such were the hopes in which he indulged. instantly make a transcursion throughout the So difficult is it to love and be wise. The king whole body: so that by this they did insinuate complimented him upon his work, saying, that, that no distance of place, nor want or indisposition "like the peace of God, it passeth all understand-of matter, could hinder magical operation; but ing;" but of a collection of natural history, "ne that, for example, we might here in Europe have verbum quidem.' sense and feeling of that which was done in China. With these vast and bottomless follies, men have been in part entertained. But we that hold firm to the works of God, and to the sense, which is God's lamp, Lucerna Dei Spiraculum Hominis, will inquire, with all sobriety and severity, whether there is to be found, in the footsteps of nature, any such transmission and influx of immateriate virtues." Annexed to this doctrine of idols, there are some inquiries into the signs of false philosophy; the causes of the errors in philosophy; and the grounds of hope that knowledge must be progressive; hopes which he had beautifully stated in the conclusion of his Advancement of Learning. After having thus cleared the way by considering the modes by which we are warped from the truth; by which, formed to adore the true God, In this state of darkness was society involved, we fall down and worship an idol: after having when Bacon formed his Art of Invention, which admonished us, that, in the conduct of the under-consists in collecting all bodies that have any standing, a false step may be fatal, that a cripple in the right will beat a racer in the wrong way, erring in proportion to his fleetness, he expresses affinity with the nature sought; and in a systema tic examination of the bodies collected. To discover facts is, therefore, his first object; but, as natural and experimental history is so co- | Another use, therefore, of this table is to discover pious and diffusive as to confound and distract the nature sought by observing its qualities which the understanding, unless digested in proper order, tables are formed and so digested, that the understanding may commodiously work upon are absent in the analogous nature, “like the images of Cassius and Brutus, in the funeral of Junia;" of which, not being represented as many others were, Tacitus saith, "Eo ipso præfulgebant quod non visebantur.” Such is the object of his first or affirmative table, which, he warns his reader, is not to raise the edi-Lightning. Acids, fice, but merely to collect the materials, and which is, therefore, to be made without any hasty indulgence of speculation, although the mind may, in proportion to its ingenuity, accidentally, from an inspection of affirmative instances, arrive at a just conclusion. By observing this table, it appears that the blood of all animals is not hot. This table, therefore, prevents hasty generalization: "As if Samuel should have rested in those sons of Jesse which were brought before him in the house, and should not have sought David, who was absent in the field." By observing the table, it also appears, that boiling water is hot; ice is cold :-living bodies are hot; dead bodies are cold;-but in boiling water and in living bodies there is motion of parts in ice and dead bodies they are fixed. VOL. I.-(11) In the same body. In Animals. Animal heat varies from minute perceptibility to about the heat of the hottest day. It is always endurable. It is increased by food, venery, exercise, fever, &c. In some fevers the heat is constant, in others intermittent, &c. Heat varies in different parts of the same body. Animals differ in heat, &c. Flame. 1. The lambent flame, related by historians to have appeared on the beads of children, gently playing about the hair. 2. The coruscations seen in a clear night on a sweating horse. 3. Of the glow-worm. 4. Of the ignis fatuus. 5. Of spirits of wine. 6. Of vegetables, straw, dry leaves. 7. Of boiling metals. 8. Of blast furnaces. By observing in this table the cause of the different quantities of the nature sought, some approximation may be made to the nature itself. 'Thus, vegetables, or common water, do not exhibit heat to the touch, but masticated pepper or boiling water are hot. Flame is hotter than the human body: boiling water than warm. Is there any difference except in the motion of the parts ? TABLE IV. Or of Exclusions, is of a more complicated nature. Bacon assumes that the quality of any nature can be ascertained by its being always present when the sought nature is present: is always absent when the sought nature is absent: increases always with its increase, and decreases with its decrease. Upon this principle his table of exclusion is formed, by excluding, 1st, Such particular natures as are not found in any instances where the given nature is present; or, 2d, Such as are found in any instances where that nature is absent; and, 3d, 1. EXCLUSION OF IRRELEVANTS. Solitary Instances.-If the inquiry be into the nature of colour: a rainbow and a piece of glass in a stable window, differ in every thing except in the prismatic colours; they are therefore solitary in resemblance. The different parts of the same piece of marble, the different parts of a leaf of a variegated tulip, agree in every thing, save the colour; they are, therefore, solitary in difference. By thus contracting the limits of the inquiry, may it not possibly be inferred, that colour depends upon refraction of the rays of light? Nature in motion.-Observe nature in her processes. If If any man desired to consider and examine the contrivances and industry of a certain artificer, he would not be content to view only the The object of this exclusion is to make a per- rude materials of the workman, and then immedifect resolution and separation of nature, not by fire, ately the finished work, but covet to be present but by the mind, which is, as it were, the divine whilst the artist prosecutes his labour, and exerfire: that, after this rejection and exclusion is cises his skill. And the like course should be duly made, the affirmative, solid, true, and well-taken in the works of nature. defined form will remain as the result of the operation, whilst the volatile opinions go off in fume. TABLE V. Travelling Instances.-In inquiring into any nature, observe its progress in approaching to or receding from existence. Let the inquiry be into the nature of whiteness. Take a piece of The fifth table of Results, termed the first clear glass and a vessel of clear water, pound the vintage or dawn of doctrine, consists of a collec-glass into fine dust and agitate the water, the tion of such natures as always accompany the pulverised glass and the surface of the water will sought nature, increase with its increase, and de-appear white; and this whiteness will have tra crease with its decrease. It appears, that, in all instances, the nature of heat is motion of parts;-flame is perpetually in motion;-hot or boiling liquors are in continual agitation ;—the sharpness and intensity of heat is increased by motion, as in bellows and blasts; -existing fire and heat are extinguished by strong compression, which checks and puts a stop to all motion;-all bodies are destroyed, or at least remarkably altered, by heat; and, when heat wholly escapes from the body, it rests from its labours; and hence it appears, that heat is motion, and nothing else. velled from non-existence into existence. Again, take a vessel full of any liquor with froth at the top, or take snow, let the froth subside and the snow melt; the whiteness will disappear, and will have travelled from existence to non-existence. Journeying Instances.-In inquiring into any nature, observe its motions gradually continued or contracted. An inquirer into the vegetation of plants should have an eye from the first sowing of the seed, and examine it almost every day, by taking or plucking up a seed after it had remained for one, two, or three days in the ground; to obHaving collected and winnowed, by the various serve with diligence when, and in what manner the seed begins to swell, grow plump, and tables, the different facts presented to the senses, it were, with he proposed to examine them by nine different be filled or become turgid, as processes: of which he has investigated only the spirit; next, how it bursts the skin, and strikes first, or PREROGATIVE Instances, those instances its fibres with some tendency upwards, unless the by which the nature sought is most easily disco-earth be very stubborn; how it shoots its fibres vered. They may be thus exhibited : in part, to constitute roots downwards; in part, to form stems upwards, and sometimes creeping sideways, if it there find the earth more open, pervious, and yielding, with many particulars of the same kind. And the like should be done as to eggs during their hatching, where the whole process of vivification and organization might be easily viewed; and what becomes of the yolk, what of the white, &c. The same is also to be attempted in inanimate bodies; and this we have endeavoured after, by observing the ways |