the latter science as in the former. But the theories and fictions of the electricians contained an idea, and all the fame idea, which has neceffarily led to method; implicit indeed, and only regulative hitherto, but which requires little more than the difmiffion of the imagery to become constitutive like the ideas of the geometrician. On the contrary, the affumptions of the magnetists (as for instance, the hypothesis that the planet itself is one vaft magnet, or that an immense magnet is concealed within it, or that of a concentric globe within the earth, revolving on its own independent axis), are but repetitions of the fame fact or phænomenon looked at through a magnifying glafs; the reiteration of the problem, not its folution. The naturalist, who

Sanno gioir nelle fatiche eccelfe;
Nè biafmo popolar, frale catena,
Spirto d' onore, il fuo cammin raffrena.
Cofi lunga ftagion per modi indegni
Europa difprezzo l'inclita fpeme,
Schernendo il vulgo e feco i regi infieme,
Nudo nocchier promettitor di regni ;
Ma per le fconofciute onde marine
L' invitta prora ei pur fofpinfe al fine.
Qual uom, che torni alla gentil conforte,
Tal ei da fua magion spiegò l'antenne ;
L'ocean corfe, e i turbini foftenne,
Vinfe le crude immagini di morte;
Pofcia, dell' ampio mar spenta la guerra,
Scorfe la dianzi favolosa terra.
Allor dal cavo pin fcende veloce,

E di grand' orma il nuovo mondo imprime ;
Nè men ratto per l'aria erge fublime,
Segno del ciel, l'infuperabil croce ;
E porge umile efempio, onde adorarla
Debba fua gente.

CHIABRERA, P. I. 12.

cannot or will not fee, that one fact is often worth a thousand, as including them all in itself, and that it firft makes all the others facts,-who has not the head to comprehend, the foul to reverence, a central experiment or obfervation (what the Greeks would perhaps have called a protophænomenon),will never receive an aufpicious answer from the oracle of nature.

149

ESSAY VIII.

The foul doth give

Brightness to the eye: and fome fay, that the fun
If not enlighten'd by th' Intelligence
That doth inhabit it, would shine no more
Than a dull clod of earth.

CARTWRIGHT'S Lady-Errant, act iii. sc. iv.

T is ftrange, yet characteristic of the spirit that was at work during the latter half of the laft century, and of which the French revolution was, I

hope, the closing monsoon, that the writings of Plato fhould be accused of estranging the mind from fober experience and fubftantial matter of fact, and of debauching it by fictions and generalities;-Plato, whose method is inductive throughout, who argues on all fubjects not only from, but in and by, inductions of facts; - who warns us indeed against that ufurpation of the fenfes, which quenching the lumen ficcum of the mind, fends it aftray after individual cases for their own fakes,— against that tenuem et manipularem experientiam, which remains ignorant even of the tranfitory relations, to which the pauca particularia of its idolatry not seldom owe their fluxional existence ;

but who fo far oftener, and with fuch unmitigated hoftility, pursues the assumptions, abstractions, generalities, and verbal legerdemain of the fophifts! Strange, but ftill more ftrange, that a notion fo groundless should be entitled to plead in its behalf the authority of Lord Bacon, from whom the Latin words in the preceding fentence are taken, and whose scheme of logic, as applied to the contemplation of nature, is Platonic throughout, and differing only in the mode, which in Lord Bacon is dogmatic, that is, affertory, in Plato tentative, and (to adopt the Socratic phrase) obstetric. I am

not the first, or even among the first, who have confidered Bacon's ftudied depreciation of the ancients, with his filence, or worse than filence, concerning the merits of his contemporaries, as the least amiable, the least exhilarating, fide in the character of our illuftrious countryman. His detractions from the divine Plato it is more eafy to explain than to justify or even to palliate; and that he has merely retaliated Aristotle's own unfair treatment of his predeceffors and contemporaries, may leffen the pain, but should not blind us to the injuftice of the afperfions on the name and works of that philofopher. The most eminent of our recent zoologifts and mineralogifts have acknowledged with respect, and even with expreffions of wonder, the performances of Ariftotle, as the first clearer and breaker-up of the ground in natural history. It is indeed scarcely poffible to peruse

the treatise on colours,* falfely ascribed to Theophraftus, the scholar and fucceffor of Aristotle, after a due confideration of the ftate and means of science at that time, without refenting the afsertion, that he had utterly enslaved his investigations in natural hiftory to his own system of logic (logicæ fuæ prorfus mancipavit). Nor let it be forgotten that the funny fide of Lord Bacon's character is to be found neither in his inductions, nor in the application of his own method to particular phænomena or particular classes of physical facts, which are at least as crude for the age of Gilbert,t Galileo, and Kepler, as Ariftotle's for that of Philip and Alexander. Nor is it to be found in his recommendation (which is wholly independent of his inestimable principles of fcientific method) of tabular collections of particulars. Let any unprejudiced naturalift turn to Lord Bacon's queftions and proposals for the investigation of single problems; to his Discourse on the Winds; or to the almoft comical caricature of this scheme in the Method of improving Natural Philosophy, by Robert Hooke (the history of whose multifold inventions, and indeed of his whole philofophical life, is the best answer to the scheme, if a scheme so palpably impracticable needs any answer),—and

* The Περὶ Χρωμάτων is not now, I believe, confidered genuine.-Ed.

+ William Gilbert died in 1603. His works are De Magnete, &c. 1600, and De Mundo, &c. 1651.-Ed.