nature really acknowledges to be known to her, and as enter into the very marrow of things. "But by far the greatest work which we set in motion is in the form of the induction, and in the conclusion which is attained to by means of it. For that form, of which the dialecticians speak, which proceeds by mere enumeration, is a puerile thing, precarious in its conclusions, exposed to danger from any contrary instance, and occupying itself only with matters generally known; nor does it lead to any result. But science requires an induction of such a form as may solve and separate experiments, and by means of due exclusions and rejections may bring out conclusions which shall be necessarily true.. ... "Nor is even this all. For we carry down the foundations of the sciences to a greater depth, and construct them with greater solidity, and begin our investigations from a higher point, than has been hitherto done; subjecting to examination those things which the vulgar logic takes on trust. We have resolved that true logic should force even supposed first principles to give reasons for themselves, until they are clearly evident. And, in so far as respects the first notions of the understanding, there is no one of those things which the understanding, left to itself, has collected, but is held by us in suspicion. Nay we sift in many ways the information of the senses themselves.... To obviate the risks thence arising, we have with much and faithful service sought and collected helps for the senses from all quarters; that substitutions may make up for their deficiencies and rectifications for their variations. Nor do we attempt that so much by instruments as by experiments. For the subtilty of experiments is far greater than that of the senses, assisted even by the most exquisite instruments; we speak of such experiments as are skilfully and artistically imagined and applied in accordance with the design of the inquiry. ... "Such are the means which we prepare for the kindling and immission of the light of nature; and they might of themselves be sufficient if the human understanding were quite plain, and resembled a smoothed table. But, seeing that the minds of men are so wonderfully beset, that a clear and polished surface for receiving the true rays of things is altogether wanting, a necessity arises that we should seek a remedy for this also. "The spectres by which the mind is pre-occupied are either adscititious or innate. The adscititious have made their way into the minds of men either from the assertions and sects of the philosophers, or from the perverse rules which have been laid down for demonstrations. But the innate are inherent in the nature of the understanding itself, which may be shown to be much more prone to error than the senses.... And the two former kinds of spectres may with difficulty be eradicated; the latter not at all. All that can be done is, to indicate them. Wherefore this doctrine of the purifying of the understanding, that it may be fitted for the reception of truth, is reduced to three reprehensions; the reprehension of philosophies, the reprehension of demonstrations, and the reprehension of the natural reason of man.. And this is the Second Part of the work. ... "But it is our intention not only to point out and prepare the ways, but also to enter upon them. The Third Part of the work, therefore, comprehends the phenomena of the universe; that is, experience of every kind, and such a natural history as may serve for a foundation on which to rear a system of philosophy. For no manner of demonstration, or form of interpreting nature, however excellent for defending and sustaining the mind from error and failure, can also provide and supply it with the material of knowledge. But by all who would not guess and divine, but discover and know, and who desire not to invent buffooneries and fables about worlds,* but to inspect, and as it were to dissect, the nature of this real world, all knowledge must be sought from things * This, which is Mr. Wood's translation, appears to be the best that can be given of "simiolas et fabulas mundorum comminisci." But the word simiolas is, we believe, unknown το the Latin language. R themselves. Nor can any substitution or compensation of wit, or meditation, or augmentation, suffice in the stead of this labour, and inquisition, and perambulation of the world; not if all the wit of all men were to combine for the purpose. The labour, therefore, must be undergone, or the undertaking for ever abandoned.... It would be of no use to smooth the mirror if there were nothing for it to reflect. But our natural history also, like our logic, differs in many respects from that which is generally received; in its end or office, in its very structure and compilation, in its nicety, finally, in its selection, and the order in which it is arranged in reference to what follows it. "For, in the first place, we propose such a natural history as may not so much amuse by variety of matter, or even profit by present fruit of experiments, as shed light upon the discovery of causes, and yield the first milk for the nursing of philosophy. "And as for the compilation, our history will be not only that of nature in a state of freedom and ease, when, that is to say, she flows on and performs her work spontaneously-such as is a history of the celestial bodies, of meteors, of the earth and sea, of minerals, plants, and animals; but much rather of nature constrained and vexed, that is, when she is thrust down from her proper state, and pressed upon and made to take a new form, by the art and ministry of man.... "Nor do we present the history only of bodies, but we have besides thought it right to exert our diligence to prepare separately also a history of properties themselves; of those, we mean, which may be deemed to be as it were cardinal in nature, and in which the first elements of nature plainly reside, as being matter in its first passions and desires; namely, density, rarity, heat, cold, consistency, fluidity, gravity, levity, and many more. ... "After having thus guarded the understanding with the surest helps and protections, and prepared with most severe selection a complete host of divine works, it may seem that nothing more remains but that we proceed at once to philosophy itself. Yet in a matter so arduous ... and doubtful it appears requisite that some things should be interposed;* partly for the purpose of instruction, partly for present use. Of these the first is, that some examples be offered of investigation and discovery according to our system and method. We speak now of such examples only as may be of the nature of types and models, placing as it were before our eyes the whole process of the mind, and the continuous frame and order of discovery in particular subjects, and they various and of note... To examples of this kind, therefore, we devote the Fourth Part of our work; which in fact is nothing else than a particular and expanded application of the Second Part. ... "The Fifth Part is introduced only for a temporary purpose, until what remains can be finished. It is made up of whatsoever things we have ourselves either found out, or proved, or added; and that not exclusively by the proper methods and rules of interpretation, but simply by that same exercise of the understanding which other men are accustomed to use in investigation and discovery. "Finally, the Sixth Part of our work, to which all the other parts are subservient and ministerial, at length discloses and propounds that philosophy which is educed and constituted out of that legitimate, chaste, and severe inquisition, which we have previously taught and prepared. But to accomplish and bring to a termination this last part is a thing both beyond our strength and beyond our hopes. We hope indeed to furnish no contemptible beginning of it; the fortune of the human race will supply the end; which will be such perhaps as, in the present state of things and of men's minds, the imagination cannot easily comprehend or take measure of." The panoramic view of his vast design which Bacon spreads out before us in this preliminary discourse, is for * The meaning is not, as Mr. Wood gives it, "a few reflections must necessarily be here inserted." The "quaedam interponenda" are the subjects of the Fourth Part of the work, the Scala Intellectus. the greater part as luminous and distinct as it is sweeping and magnificent. It will convey a complete conception to whoever will study it attentively of the general nature and object at least of the three first parts of the Instauratio Magna; the latter portion of the work, upon the actual composition of which the author cannot be said to have ever properly entered, seems to have floated somewhat vaguely before his own eye, and it may be said to form a distant back-ground in the picture he has here sketched. In our abstract, we have omitted much of the mere eloquence and illustration, with many ingenious, penetrating, and most felicitously expressed remarks; but we have preserved all the substance of the statement. Bacon's adoption of the designation of a new logic, or dialectics, for his proposed method of investigating nature, and his comparison of the method with the vulgar or common logic, are sufficiently accounted for by the use that had come to be made of logical formulæ in the discussion of scientific questions. It is true that the syllogism is the universal form of reasoning, t that all demonstration when fully developed and expressed must fall into one or other of the varieties of that form. The defect of the scientific reasoning of the schools, therefore, did not consist in its addictedness to syllogistic forms. The most perfect reasoning in the world, that of Euclid's Elements of Geometry, is every where a series of syllogisms. The error of the philosophy, both physical and moral, which formerly prevailed, and against which Bacon directs his attacks, lay in the employment of the syllogism for a purpose for which it was wholly incompetent, which was altogether beside its function and out of its province. A syllogism can establish no absolute truth. Its conclusion may be absolutely true: but all that the syllogism makes out, or professes to establish, is, that it is true provided the premisses are true. A syllogism is only a conditional affirmation. It is a statement that, given certain things, a certain other thing will follow. And one of the advantages which the syllogisms of geometry have is, that their premisses are all pure sup |