ward; to proclaim that, as they have a most | pace forever to and fro on the same wearisome serious effect on human happiness, they are path after the same recoiling stone. He exnot unworthy of the attention of the highest horted his disciples to prosecute researches human intellects. Again, it was by illustra- of a very different description; to consider tions drawn from these arts that Bacon could moral science as a practical science-a science most easily illustrate his principles. It was of which the object was to cure the diseases by improvements effected in these arts that and perturbations of the mind, and which the soundness of his principles could be most could be improved only by a method analogous speedily and decisively brought to the test, and to that which has improved medicine and surmade manifest to common understandings. gery. Moral philosophers ought, he said, to He acted like a wise commander who thins set themselves vigorously to work for the pur every other part of his line to strengthen a pose of discovering what are the actual effects point where the enemy is attacking with pecu- produced on the human character by particular liar fury, and on the fate of which the event modes of education, by the indulgence of pai of the battle seems likely to depend. In the ticular habits, by the study of particular books, Novum Organum, however, he distinctly and by society, by emulation, by imitation. Then most truly declares that his philosophy is no we might hope to find out what mode of trainless a Moral than a Natural Philosophy; that, ing was most likely to preserve and restore though his illustrations are drawn from physi- moral health.* cal science, the principles which those illustrations are intended to explain, are just as applicable to Ethical and Political inquiries, as to inquiries into the nature of Heat and Vegetation. What he was as a natural philosopher and a moral philosopher, that he was also as a theologian. He was, we are convinced, a sincere believer in the divine authority of the Christian revelation. Nothing can be found in his writings, or in any other writings, more eloquent and pathetic than some passages which were apparently written under the influence of strong devotional feeling. He loved to dwell on the power of the Christian religion to effect much that the ancient philosophers could only promise. He loved to consider that religion as the bond of charity; the curb of evil passions; the consolation of the wretched; the support of the timid; the hope of the dying. But controversies on speculative points of the ology seemed to have engaged scarcely any portion of his attention. In what he wrote on Church Government he showed, as far as he dared, a tolerant and charitable spirit. He troubled himself not at all about Homoous'an: and Homoiousians, Monothelites and Nesto rians. He lived in an age in which disputer on the most subtle points of divinity excito an intense interest throughout Europe; an He frequently treated of moral subjects, and he almost always brought to those subjects that spirit which was the essence of his whole system. He has left us many admirable practical observations on what he sometimes quaintly called the Georgics of the mind-on the mental culture which tends to produce good dispositions. Some persons, he said, might accuse him of spending labour on a matter so simple that his predecessors had passed it by with contempt. He desired such persons to remember that he had from the first announced the objects of his search to be, not the splendid and the surprising, but the useful and the true; not the deluding dreams which go forth through the shining portal of ivory, but the humbler realities of the gate of horn.t True to this principle, he indulged in no rants about the fitness of things, the all-sufficiency of virtue, and the dignity of human nature. He dealt not at all in resounding no-nowhere more than in England. He wai things, such as those with which Bolingbroke placed in the very thick of the conflict H pretended to comfort himself in exile; and in was in power at the time of the Synod of Dort, which Cicero sought consolation after the loss and must for months have been daily deafened of Tullia. The casuistical subtleties which with talk about election, reprobation, and final occupied the attention of the keenest spirits of perseverance. Yet we do not remember a line his age had, it should seem, no attractions for in his works from which it can be inferred him. The treatises of the doctors whom Es- that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. cobar afterwards compared to the four beasts, While the world was resounding with the and the four-and-twenty elders in the Apoca- noise of a disputatious philosophy and a dislypse, Bacon dismissed with most contemptu-putatious theology, the Baconian school, like ous brevity. "Inanes plerumque evadunt et Alworthy seated between Square and Thwack. futiles." Nor did he ever meddle with those um, preserved a calm neutrality, half-scornful, enigmas which have puzzled hundreds of ge-half-benevolent, and, content with adding to nerations, and will puzzle hundreds more. He the sum of practical good, left the war of said nothing about the grounds of moral obli- words to those who liked it. gation, or the freedom of the human will. He We have dwelt long on the end of the Baco had no inclination to employ himself in la-nian philosophy, because from this peculiarity hours resembling those of the damned in the Grecian Tartarus-to spin forever on the same wheel round the same pivot, to gape forever after the same deluding clusters, to pour water forever into the same bottomless buckets, to Novum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 127. all the other peculiarities of that philosophy necessarily arose. Indeed, scarcely any person who proposed to himself the same end with Bacon could fail to hit upon the same means. The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be this-that he invented a new method of De Augmentis, Lib. 7, Cap. 3. arriving at truth, which method is called Induction; and that he exposed the fallacy of the syllogistic reasoning which had been in vogue before his time. This notion is about as well founded as that of the people who, in the middie ages, imagined that Virgil was a great conjurer. Many who are far too well informed to talk such extravagant nonsense, entertain what we think incorrect notions as to what Bacon really effected in this matter. The inductive method has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the clown to the conclusion, that if he sows barley he shall nct reap wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns, that a cloudy day is the best for catching trout. The very infant, we imagine, is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and none from his father. Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive method; but it is not true that he was the first person who correctly analyzed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing that syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the discovery of any new principle; had shown that such discoveries can be made by induction, and by induction alone; and had given the history of the inductive process, concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and precision. We might go on to what are called by Bacon prærogative instantiarum. For example: "It must be something peculiar to mincea pies, for I can eat any other pastry without the least bad effect." This is the instantia solitaria. We might easily proceed, but we have already sufficiently explained our meaning. We repeat, that we dispute neither the ingenuity nor the accuracy of the theory contained in the second book of the Novum Organum; but we think that Bacon greatly overrated its utility. We conceive that the inductive process, like many other processes, is not likely to be better performed merely because men know how they perform it. William Tell would not have been one whit more likely to cleave the apple if he had known that his arrow would describe a parabola under the influence of the attraction of the earth. Captain Barclay would not have been more likely to walk a thousand miles in a thou sand hours if he had known the place and name of every muscle in his legs. Monsieur Jourdain probably did not pronounce D and F more correctly after he had been apprized that D is pronounced by touching the teeth with the end of the tongue, and F by putting the upper teeth on the lower lip. We cannot perceive that the study of grammar makes the smallest difference in the speech of people who have always lived in good society. Not one Londoner in ten thousand can lay down the rules for the proper use of will and shall. Yet not one Londoner in a million ever misplaces his will and shall. No man uses figures of speech with more proAgain, we are not inclined to ascribe much priety because he knows that one figure is practical value to the analysis of the inductive called a metonomy and another a synecdoche. method which Bacon has given in the second A drayman in a passion calls out, "You are a book of the "Novum Organum." It is indeed pretty fellow," without suspecting that he is an elaborate and correct analysis. But it is uttering irony, and that irony is one of the four an analysis of that which we are all doing primary tropes. The old systems of rhetoric from morning to night, and which we continue were never regarded by the most experienced to do even in our dreams. A plain man finds and discerning judges as of any use in formhis stomach out of order. He never heard ing an orator. "Ego hanc vim intelligo," said Lord Bacon's name. But he proceeds in the Cicero, "esse in præceptis omnibus, non ut ea strictest conformity with the rules laid down secuti oratores eloquentiæ laudem sint adepti, in the second book of the "Novum Organum," sed quæ sua sponte homines eloquentes faceand satisfies himself that minced pies have rent, ea quosdam observasse, atque id egisse; done the mischief. "I ate minced pies on sic esse non eloquentiam ex artificio, sed artiMonday and Wednesday, and I was kept cium ex eloquentia natum."* We must own awake by indigestion all night." This is the that we entertain the same opinion concerning comparentia ad intellectum instantiarum convenien- the study of logic which Cicero entertained tium. “I did not eat any on Tuesday and Fri- concerning the study of rhetoric. A man of day, and I was quite well." This is the com- sense syllogizes in celarent and cesare all day parentia instantiarum in proximo quæ natura data|long without suspecting it; and though he may privantur. "I ate very sparingly of them on not know what an ignoratio elenchi is, has no Sunday, and was very slightly indisposed in difficulty in exposing it whenever he falls in the evening. But on Christmas day I almost with it, which is likely to be as often as he dined on them, and was so ill that I was in falls in with a reverend Master of Arts, nov. some danger." This is the comparentia instan- rished on mode and figure in the cloisters of tiarum secundum magis et minus. "It cannot Oxford. Considered merely as an intellectual have been the brandy which I took with them. feat, the Organum of Aristotle can scarcely be For I have drunk brandy daily for years with- admired too highly. But the more we compare out being the worse for it." This is the re-individual with individual, school with school, jectio naturarum. Our invalid then proceeds to what is termed by Bacon the Vindemiatio, and pronounces that mince pies do not agree with him. See the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics, and the first of the Metaphysics. VOL. II.-36 nation with nation, generation with generation. the more do we lean to the opinion that the knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners. What Aristotle did for the syllogistic pro De Oratore, Lib. 1. cess Bacon has, in the second book of the No- | ham Grenville would have been sufficient to vum Organum, done for the inductive process; do the work. that is to say, he has analyzed it well. His rules are quite proper; but we do not need them, because they are drawn from our own constant practice. It appears to us, then, that the difference be tween a sound and an unsound induction, or, to use the Baconian phraseology, between the interpretation of nature and the anticipation of nature, does not lie in this-that the interpreter of nature goes through the process ana But though everybody is constantly performing the process described in the second book of the Novum Organum, some men perform it|lyzed in the second book of the Novum Organum well and some perform it ill. Some are led and the anticipator through a different process by it to truth and some to error. It led Frank- They may both perform the same process. But lin to discover the nature of lightning. It led the anticipator performs it foolishly or care thousands who had less brains than Franklin lessly; the interpreter performs it with patience, to believe in animal magnetism. But this was attention, sagacity, and judgment. Now, prenot because Franklin went through the process cepts can do little towards making men patient described by Bacon and the dupes of Mesmer and attentive, and still less towards making through a different process. The comparentia them sagacious and judicious. It is very well and rejectiones, of which we have given exam- to tell men to be on their guard against preju ples, will be found in the most unsound deduc- dices, not to believe facts on slight evidence, tions. We have heard that an eminent judge not to be content with a scanty collection of of the last generation was in the habit of facts, to put out of their minds the idola which jocosely propounding after dinner a theory, Bacon has so finely described. But these rules that the cause of the prevalence of Jacobinism are too general to be of much practical use. was the practice of bearing three names. He The question is, what is a prejudice? How quoted on the one side Charles James Fox, long does the incredulity with which I hear a Richard Brinsley Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, new theory propounded continue to be a wise John Philpot Curran, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and salutary incredulity? When does it be Theobald Wolfe Tone. These were instantia come an idolum specus, the unreasonable perticonvenientes. He then proceeded to cite instances nacity of a too skeptical mind? What is slight absentia in proxime:-William Pitt, John Scott, evidence? What collection of facts is scanty? William Wyndham, Samuel Horsley, Henry Will ten instances do, or fifty, or a hundred? Dundas, Edmund Burke. He might have gone In how many months would the first human on to instances secundum magis et minus. The beings who settled on the shores of the ocean practice of giving children three names has been have been justified in believing that the moon for some time a growing practice, and Jacobin-had an influence on their tides? After how ism has also been growing. The practice of giving children three names is more common in America than in England. In England we still have a king and a House of Lords, but the Americans are republicans. The rejectiones are obvious. Burke and Theobald Wolfe Tone were both Irishmen; therefore the being an Irishman is not the cause of Jacobinism. We think, then, that it is possible to lay Horsley and Horne Tooke are both clergy-down accurate rules, as Bacon has done, for men; therefore the being a clergyman is not the performing of that part of the inductive the cause of Jacobinism. Fox and Wyndham process which all men perform alike; but that were both educated at Oxford; and therefore these rules, though accurate, are not wanted, the being educated at Oxford is not the cause because in truth they only tell us to do what of Jacobinism. Pitt and Horne Tooke were we are all doing. We think that it is impossiboth educated at Cambridge; therefore the be-ble to lay down any precise rule for the pering educated at Cambridge is not the cause of Jacobinism. In this way our inductive philosopher arrives at what Bacon calls the vintage, and pronounces that the having three names is the cause of Jacobinism. Here is an induction corresponding with Bacon's analysis, and ending in a monstrous absurdity. In what, then, does this induction differ from the induction which leads us to the conclusion that the presence of the sun is the cause of our having more light by day than by night? The difference evidently is not in the kind of instances, but in the number of instances; that is to say, the difference is not in that part of the process for which Bacon has given precise rules but in 'a circumstance for which no precise rue can possibly be given. If the learned author of the theory about Jacobinism had enlarged either of his tables a little, his system would have been destroyed. The names of Tom Paine and William Wynd many experiments would Jenner have been justified in believing that he had discovered a safeguard against the small-pox? These are questions to which it would be most desi. rable to have a precise answer; but unhappily they are questions to which no precise answer can be returned. forming of that part of the inductive process which a great experimental philosopher performs in one way and a superstitious old woman in another. On this subject, we think, Bacon was in an error. He certainly attributed to his rules a value which did not belong to them. He went so far as to say, that if his method of making discoveries were adopted, little would depend on the degree of force or acuteness of any intellect; that all minds would be reduced to one level; that his philosophy resembled a compass or a rule which equalizes all hands, and enables the most unpractised person to draw a more correct circle or line than the best draughtsman can produce without such aid. This really seems to us as extravagant as it would have been in Lindley Murray to announce that everybody who should learn his * Novum Organum, Præf. and Lib. 1, Aph. 12 grammar would write as good English as Dryden; or in that very able writer, Dr. Whately, to promise that all the readers of his logic would reason like Chillingworth, and that all the readers of his rhetoric would speak like Burke. That Bacon was altogether mistaken as to this point will now hardly be disputed. His philosophy has flourished during two hundred years, and has produced none of this levelling. The interval between a man of talents and a dunce is as wide as ever; and is never more clearly discernible than when they engage in researches which require the constant use of induction. and carefully. His predecessors had been anticipators of nature. They had been content with first principles, at which they had arrived by the most scanty and slovenly induction. And why was this? It was, we conceive, because their philosophy proposed to itself no practical end, because it was merely an exercise of the mind. A man who wants to contrive a new machine or a new medicine has a strong motive to observe accurately and patiently, and to try experiment after experiment. But a man who merely wants a theme for disputation or declamation has no such motive. He is therefore content with premises grounded on assumption, or on the most scanty and hasty induction. Thus, we conceive, the schoolmen acted. On their foolish premises they often argued with great ability; and as their object was "assensum subjugare, non res' It will be seen that we do not consider Bacon's ingenious analysis of the inductive method as a very useful performance. Bacon was not, as we have already said, the inventor of the inductive method. He was not even the person who first analyzed the inductive method to be victorious in controversy, not to be correctly, though he undoubtedly analyzed it victorious over nature-they were consistent. more minutely than any who preceded him. For just as much logical skill could be shown He was not the person who first showed that in reasoning on false as on true premises. by the inductive method alone new truth could But the followers of the new philosophy, probe discovered. But he was the person who posing to themselves the discovery of useful first turned the minds of speculative men, truth as their object, must have altogether faillong occupied in verbal disputes, to the dis-ed of attaining that object, if they had been covery of new truth; and, by doing so, he at content to build theories on superficial indu once gave to the inductive method an import- tion. ance and dignity which had never before belonged to it. He was not the maker of that road; he was not the discoverer of that road; he was not the person who first surveyed and mapped that road. But he was the person who first called the public attention to an inexhaustible mine of wealth, which had been utterly neglected, and which was accessible by that road alone. By doing so, he caused that road which had previously been trodden only by peasants and higglers, to be frequented by a higher class of travellers. That which was eminently his own in his system was the end which he proposed to himself. The end being given, the means, as it appears to us, could not well be mistaken. If others had aimed at the same object with Bacon, we hold it to be certain that they would have employed the same method with Bacon. It would have been hard to convince Seneca that the inventing of a safety-lamp was an employment worthy of a philosopher. It would have been hard to persuade Thomas Aquinas to descend from the making of syllogisms to the making of gunpowder. But Seneca would never have doubted for a moment that it was only by a series of experiments that a safetylamp could be invented. Thomas Aquinas would never have thought that his barbara and baralipton would enable him to ascertain the proportion which charcoal ought to bear to saitpetre in a pound of gunpowder. Neither common sense nor Aristotle would have suffered him to fall into such an absurdity. By stimulating men to the discovery of new truth, Bacon stimulated them to employ the inductive method, the only method, even the ancient philosophers and the schoolmen themselves being judges, by which new truth can be discovered. By stimulating men to the discovery of useful truth, he furnished them with a motive to perform the inductive process well Bacon has remarkedf that in all ages when philosophy was stationary, the mechanical arts went on improving. Why was this? Evidently because the mechanic was not content with so careless a mode of induction as served the purpose of the philosopher. And why was the philosopher more easily satisfied than the mechanic? Evidently because the object of the mechanic was to mould things, whilst the object of the philosopher was only to mould words. Careful induction is not at all neces sary to the making of a good syllogism. But it is indispensable to the making of a good shoe. Mechanics, therefore, have always been, as far as the range of their humble but useful callings extended, not anticipators but interpreters of nature. And when a philosophy arose, the object of which was to do on a large scale what the mechanic does on a small scale to extend the power and to supply the wants of man-the truth of the premises, which logically is a matter altogether unimportant, became a matter of the highest importance; and the careless induction with which men of learning had previously been satisfied, gave place, of necessity, to an induction far more accurate and satisfactory. What Bacon did for the inductive philoso phy may, we think, be fairly stated thus. The objects of preceding speculators were objects which could be obtained without careful induction. Those speculators, therefore, did not perform the inductive process carefully. Bacon stirred up men to pursue an object which could be attained only by induction, and by induction carefully performed; and con sequently induction was more carefully per formed. We do not think that the importance of what Bacon did for inductive philosophy * Novum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 29. + De Augmentis, Lib. 1. has ever been overrated. But we think that | lectual universe resembled that which the archthe nature of his services is often mistaken, angel, from the golden threshold of heaven, and was not fully understood even by himself. darted down into the new creation. It was not by furnishing philosophers with rules for performing the inductive process well, but by furnishing them with a motive for performing it well, that he conferred so vast a benefit on society. In the temper of Bacon-we speak of Bacon the philosopher, not of Bacon the lawyer and politician-there was a singular union of audacity and sobriety. The promises which he made to mankind might, to a superficial reader, seem to resemble the rants which a great dramatist has put into the mouth of an Oriental conqueror, half-crazed by good fortune and by violent passions: "Round he surveyed-and well might, where he stood Of night's extended shade-from eastern point Beyond the horizon." To give to the human mind a direction His knowledge differed from that of other which it shall retain for ages is the rare pre-men as a Terrestrial Globe differs from an Atrogative of a few imperial spirits. It cannot, las which contains a different country on every therefore, be uninteresting to inquire, what leaf. The towns and roads of England, France, was the moral and intellectual constitution and Germany are better laid down in the atlas which enabled Bacon to exercise so vast an than in the globe. But while we are looking at influence on the world. England we see nothing of France; and while we are looking at France we see nothing of Germany. We may go to the atlas to learn the bearings and distances of York and Bristol, or of Dresden and Prague. But it is useless if we want to know the bearings and distances of France and Martinique, or of England and Canada. On the globe we shall not find all the market-towns in our own neighbourhood; but we shall learn from it the comparative extent and the relative position of all the king doms of the earth. "I have taken," said Ba con, in a letter written when he was only thirtyone, to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." In any other young man, indeed in any other man, this would have been a ridiculous flight of presumption. There have been thousands of better mathematicians, astronomers, chemists, physicians, botanists, mineralogists, than Bacon. No man would go to Bacon's works to learn any particular science or art; any more than he would go to a twelve-inch globe in order to find his way from Kennington Turnpike to Clapham Common. The art which Bacon taught was the art of inventing arts. The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men, was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments of knowledge. "He shall have chariots easier than air, But Bacon performed what he promised. In The true philosophical temperament may, we think, be described in four words-much hope, little faith; a disposition to believe that any thing, however extraordinary, may be done; an indisposition to believe that any thing extraordinary has been done. In these points the constitution of Bacon's mind seems to us to have been absolutely perfect. He was at once the Mammon and the Surly of his friend Ben. Sir Epicure did not indulge in visions more magnificent and gigantic. Surly did not sift evidence with keener and more sagacious incredulity. Closely connected with this peculiarity of Bacon's temper was a striking peculiarity of his understanding. With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human being. The small fine mind of Labruyère had not a more delicate tact than the large intellect of Bacon. The "Essays" contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a courtmasque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the whole world of knowledge. His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed. Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady. Spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath its shade. In keenness of observation he has been equalled, though perhaps never surpassed. bus the largeness of his mind was all his own. The glauce with which he surveyed the intel The mode in which he communicated his thoughts was exceedingly peculiar. He had no touch of that disputatious temper which be often censured in his predecessors. He effected a vast intellectual revolution in opposition to a vast mass of prejudices; yet he never engaged in any controversy; nay, we cannot at present recollect, in all his philosophical works, a single passage of a controversial character. All those works might with propriety have been put into the form which he adopted in the work entitled Cogitata et visa; "Franciscus Baconus sic cogitavit." These are thoughts which have occurred to me: weigh them well, and take them or leave them. Borgia said of the famous expedition of Charles the Eighth, that the French had con quered Italy, not with steel, but with chalk; for that the only exploit which they had found necessary for the purpose of taking military oc cupation of any place, had been to mark the doors of the houses where they meant to quar ter. Bacon often quoted this saying, and loved to apply it to the victories of nis own inter lect." His philosophy, he said, came as a * Novum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 35, and elsewhere |