standing is naturally inclined to come at once on receiving the intimation of the sense; * and in laying open and fortifying for the mind a new and certain road from the very perceptions of the senses. That the mind requires some props or helps he holds to have been without doubt perceived by those who assigned so great a part to Logic; but that art, from the manner in which it was employed, was rather efficacious in rivetting errors than in disclosing truth; so that nothing, he conceives, remains but that the whole work of the mind be begun afresh; that from the very commencement the mind be in nowise left to itself, but always forced to proceed according to rule; and that the business be finished as if by means of machinery. The necessity of mechanical aid for the production of all great effects in works of the hand is insisted upon as an illustration and proof of a similar necessity in works of the mind. Two special admonitions are then propounded; the first relating to persons, the second to things. The honour and reverence due to the ancients Bacon professes to be desirous of allowing to remain undiminished and untouched; with them he comes into no opposition or rivalry; the intellectual road or method by which he proposes to pursue his end is one which was to them wholly untried and unknown. Nor is it any part of his purpose to attempt to throw down either the actually received philosophy, or any other system, more correct or more comprehensive, which may exist or may arise. He does not deny but that the received philosophy and other systems of the like kind may be employed pro * This obscure passage is rendered by Shaw, "to guard the sense by a kind of reduction" (explained in a foot-note as meaning, "by contriving ways of transmitting things, in a proper manner, to the senses, that a true judgment may be formed of them when thus again brought under view"); "generally to reject that work of the mind which is consequent to sense." Mr. Wood's translation is, -" We, as it were, restore the senses to their former rank, but generally reject that operation of the mind which follows close upon the senses. perly and with good effect in promoting discussion, in embellishing oratory, in the professorial office, in the business of civil life. Nay, he adds, we openly intimate and declare that the philosophy which we bring forward will not be very useful for such purposes. It is not ready at hand; it is not to be caught hold of in passing; it does not flatter the understanding through its preconceived notions; it does not descend to the apprehension of the multitude, excepting only in its utility and its effects. Let there be, then, he continues, and well and happy may it prove for both, two emanations and also two dispensations of learning; two tribes and, as it were, kindreds of contemplators mplators or philosophers; and they not enemies or aliens the one to the other, but confederated and bound together by assistance mutually rendered: in a word, let there be one method of cultivating the sciences, and another of discovering them. The former he afterwards proposes to call the Anticipation of the Mind; the latter, the Interpretation of Nature. He concludes by requesting that the reader, notwithstanding all the pains he has taken to make his statements not only true but perspicuous, will not expect to acquire a full understanding and conviction of what the work sets before him by a cursory or inattentive perusal of it, but that whoever would really comprehend the new system of philosophy will try the method for himself, will accustom his mind to that subtilty of things which experiment alone discovers, will finally correct the depraved and deeply inherent habits of his mind by a temperate and as it were legitimate hesitation, and will then only (if it should so please him) make use of his judginent after he has begun to be master of himself. The First Book of the Novum Organum is, not perhaps in respect of its pure Latinity, but yet in all such essential qualities of writing as do not depend upon the usages of a particular language, one of the most perfect of human compositions. Every sentence has evidently been elaborated with the greatest care; and yet the easy unforced vigour and animation of the expression are as remarkable as its economy, compactness, and perspicuity. Nothing is redundant, and yet nothing is harsh or cramped: it would be difficult to mention any other writing in which aphoristic concentration and energy are so admirably blended with all the highest qualities of illustrative and frequently even decorative eloquence. No where else, probably, is there to be found either so crowded a succession of brilliant sentences, or yet a splendour more mild and grateful. Much of this power and beauty must be lost in the best translation; some of it is perhaps due to qualities in the Latin language which the English does not possess, and might have been wanting if the work had been written by Bacon himself in his mother tongue-although in that case its place would probably have been supplied by something as good of a different kind. The first English translation of the Novum Organum professing to be complete was that given by Shaw in his edition of Bacon's Philosophical Works, 3 vols., 4to, London, 1733. The next is that published in the 14th volume of Mr. Montagu's edition of Bacon's Works, 8vo., London, 1831, which was executed by Mr. William Wood. And there is a third translation, of which, however, we have seen only the First Book, by the late James Glassford, Esq., 8vo., Edinburgh, 1844. The first four aphorisms of Book First may be regarded as enunciating the principles or ideas that form the basis of the work. They may be thus literally translated : 1. Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, does and understands so far as he may have observed, respecting the order of nature, in things or in his mind;* and further he has neither knowledge nor power. * That is, by simple observation of facts, or by meditation upon them. The original is "quantum, de naturae ordine, re vel mente observaverit." In the Distributio Operis, where the aphorism is given in the same terms with the exception of this one phrase, we have "opere vel mente observaverit." In either case the distinction that is intended to be marked is between things, facts, effects, and the inferences which the 2. Neither the naked hand, nor the understanding left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps; of which the need is not less for the understanding than for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either excite or guide its motion, so also the instruments of the mind either prompt or guard the understanding. 3. Human knowledge and power coincide, because ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect. For nature is not conquered except by obeying her; and whatever in contemplation is of the nature of a cause, that in operation is of the nature of a rule. 4. For works man can do nothing else than apply and remove natural bodies; the rest nature performs within herself. The next fourteen aphorisms are employed in pointing out how little had yet been done by man, and the causes of the imperfect state in which the arts and sciences still remained. Although the number of processes known and practised, it is observed, might be thought considerable, yet the number of axioms discovered was small; the sciences as they existed, Bacon complains, were only arrangements of things actually found out, not methods of invention, or designations of new operations. All this he conceives to have arisen from the over-estimation in which men have held the unassisted powers of the human mind, and their consequent neglect of its true helps. And then he expatiates, in nearly the same words as in the De Augmentis, upon the inutility, and worse than inutility, of the common logic in the invention or promotion of science, upon the defects of the syllogism, and upon the erroneous character of most of the received notions in physic, as well as the insufficiency of the evidence on which they rest. mind draws from them. Mr. Glassford's version is, "may have observed by sense or mentally." Mr. Wood translates, -"Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, does and understands as much, as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to things or the mind, permit him." If not positively wrong, this is certainly at least obscure and liable to be entirely misunderstood by an English reader. "Observations on the order of nature, with regard to the mind" is no part of Bacon's idea. What he speaks of is, distinctly, observation by the mind. The old and the new, the wrong and the right way of proceeding are thus stated in the 19th aphorism: There are and can be but two ways of investigating and discovering truth. The one from sense and particulars flies to the most general axioms, and from those principles and their never questioned truth judges of and derives intermediate axioms; and this is the way in use. The other raises axioms from sense and particulars, by ascending continuously and step by step, so that the most general axioms are arrived at in the last stage; which is the true way, but untried. When the intellect is left to itself it takes the first way, after the order observed in logic. A man of a sober, patient, and grave disposition may, even with his understanding left to itself (especially if it be not impeded by the received doctrines) sometimes try the other way; but he will not advance far in it. The difference between the two methods, it is then pointed out in the 22nd aphorism, lies wholly wholly in the way in which the mind ascends from the senses and from particulars to general truths. They both begin with the former and end with the latter; but in the one experiments and particulars are only cursorily glanced at, in the other they are considered carefully and after a certain plan; the one sets out with the establishment or assumption of a number of abstract and useless general principles; the other rises by degrees to those which are in reality the best known to nature. There is no small difference between the Idola, or false images, of the human mind, and the ideas of the divine mind; that is, between certain vain opinions, and the true signatures and impressions made upon created things, as really discovered. The axioms in common use, it is remarked in the 25th aphorism, were all derived from a very scanty experience wholly gathered by the unassisted hand, and from a small number of particular * But we are not sure that this is what Bacon means by " ex tenui et manipulari experientia," literally, from an experience scanty and held in the hand. Mr. Wood's translation is, " from a scanty handful, as it were, of experience;" Mr. Glassford's, "from a slender and manipular experience." |