positions, mere conceptions which the mind forms without having to look beyond itself. We are not denying that the conceptions or suppositions are true. They have in fact the peculiar character of being such that it is impossible for the mind not to believe them to be true. But, for that matter, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments might be delivered in a series of syllogisms. Given, it might be said, so many genies, giants, and enchanters, and such and such effects will follow. The one proposition would be as true as the other; the conclusion would be true if the premisses were true; and that is all that logic can make out in any case. The old writers on science were wont to employ it as if they thought it could do a great deal more. Its proper and only function is the exposition of an argument; they seemed often to think that a correctly constructed syllogism was the sufficient explanation of a phenomenon.

At the same time Bacon is not justified in making this matter of charge against the common logic. There is usually no fault to be found with the mere logic of the old scientific writers. Their conclusions are legitimately deduced from their premisses; and that is all that can be required on the score of logic. The single respect in which their demonstrations are objectionable is, that they often set out from false or insufficiently established premisses; but with the establishment of premisses, as such, logic has nothing to do; its sole office is the deduction of conclusions. Its premisses are assigned to it, or may be assumed at pleasure.

It is true that a false proposition which is adopted as one of the premisses of a syllogism has often been previously obtained as the conclusion of another syllogism. But, although false as a premiss, it may have been true as a conclusion; that is to say, it may have been quite legitimately deduced from other premisses. In that case the fault of the demonstration will still be, as before, that some one or other of the premisses has been false.

The greatest amount of misconception and confusion of thought, however, in regard to these subjects, has been occasioned by Bacon's describing the method he proposes

for the investigation of natural phenomena and processes as a new logic, and designating it by the term induction. It has become common to distinguish it as the Inductive Logic.

Whatever else may be new in the Baconian method, there most certainly neither is, nor can be, any novelty in its logic. If there were, it would only be an illogical, that is, an unreasonable or absurd method. For nobody has ever pretended that the old logic is false; the worst charge that has been brought against it is that it is useless or inefficient. To talk of a new logic, differing in its principles from the old, is tantamount to talking of a new geometry, or a new species of square or circle.

But what Bacon understands by Induction is not a logic at all, or anything of the nature of a logic. Induction is the name given by the logicians to that kind of syllogism in which a universal conclusion is obtained from premisses relating to particulars, instead of a particular conclusion being derived from a universal proposition, as is more commonly the case. But the enumeration of particulars in such an induction is complete; and the conclusion, therefore, is as necessary as in the common syllogism. Thus, John, Thomas, and Henry, are each dark-haired; John, Thomas, and Henry make up all the family of the Smiths; therefore the Smiths are all dark-haired; is an example of logical induction. Bacon's induction is altogether different. In that, from a number of particular instances, examined by means of observation and experiment, and sifted by the proper rejections rejec clusions, we infer, not by the necessary laws of thought (with which alone logic concerns itself), but on our experience of the uniformity of the operations of nature, on grounds of analogy, or on other such considerations, that a certain thing is probably universally true. This is not such a process as comes within the domain of logic, which, as already explained, undertakes to teach nothing more than how two propositions having a certain relation combine to generate a third, and in so teaching is entirely indifferent as to whether the generating propositions be true or false. A logical induction does not, any more than a logical deduction, look beyond the mind itself: logic is the science of a certain mental process, not the science or art of the collection and examination of material facts. Its conclusions are, in all cases, necessary and irresistible, the premisses being admitted; and depend for their reception by the mind in no degree upon its knowledge or experience of any kind, or even upon the degree of its judgment, or capacity of weighing evidence. There is no evidence to be weighed or balanced in a syllogism, whether deductive or inductive: all the evidence is upon one side.

It is true that so much of the Baconian Induction as consists in drawing the conclusion may be resolved into a logical form, by introducing, or assuming that there is always present to the mind, as one of the premisses, a proposition asserting the uniformity of the operations of nature. In this way the major proposition will be, What is found in examined instances will be found in all instances; the minor, A certain thing is what is found in examined instances; the conclusion, Therefore the same thing will be found in all instances. The middle term, (that by which the two premisses are connected so long as they continue distinct, and which like a bridge becomes unnecessary, and is removed, when they are in the conclusion brought together into one affirmation) will be, What is found in examined instances. But this only proves that, in so far as the Baconian Induction is a logical process, its logic is merely the common logic. As the term is used by Bacon, however, it includes also, and that, we may say, as its principal part, another process, the collection and examination of the instances, which, as we have seen, is not a logical process at all,

SECTION II.

THE TREATISE DE DIGNITATE ET AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM; FORMING THE FIRST PART OF THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA.

WHEN the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum was published, by itself, in 1623, 23. it was introduced by a short advertisement from Dr. Rawley, Bacon's chaplain, the more essential portion of which is to the following effect : -" Since it hath pleased my lord to do me the honour of making use of my assistance in setting forth his works, I have thought that it would not be improper for me briefly to inform the reader of some things which concern this First Volume. The present treatise, on the Dignity and Advancement of the Sciences, was published by his lordship eighteen years ago, in the English language, and in two Books only; and was addressed to his majesty, as it still is. Not long afterwards he became anxious to have it translated into Latin; having heard that that was desired in foreign countries, and being, moreover, himself wont often to say that books written in the modern tongues would ere long become bankrupt. He now, accordingly, publishes such a translation, executed by persons distinguished for their eloquence, and revised and corrected, besides, by himself. The First Book is merely a translation, and is very little changed; but the remaining eight, which declare the partitions of learning, and formerly made only one Book, come forth now as a new work. The principal reason which moved his lordship thus to rewrite and amplify the work was this; that, that in publishing long afterwards his Instauratio Magna, he appointed the Partitions of the Sciences to be the first part of that work; and to be followed first by the Novum Organum, then by the Historia Naturalis, and so forth. Finding, then, the said part relating to the Partitions of the Sciences already executed (though less solidly than the dignity of the argument demanded), he thought the best thing he could do would be to go over again what he had written, and to bring it to the state of a satisfactory and completed work. And in this way he considers that he fulfils the promise which he has given respecting the First Part of the Instauration." It had been noted at the end of the Distributio, published with the Novum Organum, that the First Part of the Instauration, comprehending the Partitions of the Sciences, was wanting; but that the said Partitions might in part be gathered from the Second Book of The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human.'

In his Life of Bacon prefixed in English to the Resuscitatio (1657), and in Latin to the Opuscula Posthuma (1658), Rawley speaks of the translation of the 'Advancement of Learning' into Latin somewhat differently from what he does in this advertisement. In the English Life, in enumerating in their order the " books and writings, both in English and Latin," written by Bacon after his retirement, he merely mentions the "De Augmentis Scientiarum, or The Advancement of Learning, put into Latin, with several enrichments and enlargements," as if the translation had been wholly Bacon's own. In the Latin Life he expresses himself more emphatically: in there noticing the De Augmentis he describes it as a work which the author bestowed much labour in turning from English into Latin by his own exertions, or as the phrase might almost be rendered, without assistance; -" in quo e lingua vernacula, proprio marte, in Latinam transferendo honoratissimus auctor plurimum desudavit." We must probably, however, understand the meaning of the worthy chaplain to be only that the translation was in part done by Bacon himself; and his words, in truth, strictly taken, do not assert more. In the Resuscitatio Rawley has printed among other Letters of Bacon's one entitled 'A Letter of Request to Doctor Playfer to translate the book of Advancement of Learning into Latin.' There Bacon,