เ unworthy of the attention of a man of liberal education. Cogitavit,' says Bacon of himself, eam esse opinionem sive æstimationem humidam et damnosam, minui nempe majestatem mentis humanæ, si in experimentis et rebus particularibus, sensui subjectis, et in materia terminatis, diu ac multum versetur: præsertim cum hujusmodi res ad inquirendum laboriosæ, ad meditandum ignobiles, ad discendum asperæ, ad practicam illiberales, numero infinitæ, et subtilitate pusillæ videri soleant, et ob hujusmodi conditiones, gloriæ artium minus sint accommodatæ. This opinion seemed to him ' omnia in familia humana • turbasse.' It had undoubtedly caused many arts which were of the greatest utility, and which were susceptible of the greatest improvements, to be neglected by speculators, and abandoned to joiners, masons, smiths, weavers, apothecaries. It was necessary to assert the dignity of those arts, to bring them prominently forward, to proclaim that, as they have a most serious effect on human happiness, they are not unworthy of the attention of the highest human intellects. Again, it was by illustrations drawn from these arts that Bacon could most easily illustrate his principles. It was by improvements effected in these arts that the soundness of his principles could be most speedily and decisively brought to the test, and made manifest to common understandings. He acted like a wise commander who thins every other part of his line to strengthen a point where the enemy is attacking with peculiar fury, and on the fate of which the event of the battle seems likely to depend. In the Novum Organum, however, he distinctly and most truly declares that his philosophy is no less a Moral than a Natural Philosophy-that, though his illustrations are drawn from physical science, the principles which those illustrations are intended to explain are just as applicable to Ethical and Political enquiries as to enquiries into the nature of Heat and Vegetation.† 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 somewhat quaintly called the Georgics of the mind,—on the mental culture which tends to produce good dis * Cogitata et visa. The expression opinio humida may surprise a reader not accustomed to Bacon's style. The allusion is to the maxim of Heraclitus the obscure-Dry light is the best. By dry light, Bacon understood the light of the intellect, not obscured by the mists of passion, interest, or prejudice. Novum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 127. positions. 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.* 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 nothings, such as those with which Bolingbroke pretended to comfort himself in exile; and in which Cicero sought consolation after the loss of Tullia. The casuistical subtleties which occupied the attention of the keenest spirits of his age had, it should seem, no attractions for him. The treatises of the doctors whom Escobar afterwards compared to the four beasts, and the four-and-twenty elders in the Apocalypse, Bacon dismissed with most contemptuous brevity. Inanes plerumque evadunt et futiles.' Nor did he ever meddle with those ænigmas which have puzzled hundreds of generations, and will puzzle hundreds more. He said nothing about the grounds of moral obligation, or the freedom of the human will. He had no inclination to employ himself in labours resembling those of the damned in the Grecian Tartarus,-to spin for ever on the same wheel round the same pivot,—to gape for ever after the same deluding clusters, to pour water for ever into the same bottomless buckets,—to pace for ever to and fro on the same wearisome path after the same recoiling stone. He exhorted his disciples to prosecute researches of a very different description; to consider moral science as a practical science—a science of which the object was to cure the diseases and perturbations of the mind,-and which could be improved only by a method analogous to that which has improved medicine and surgery. Moral philosophers ought, he said, to set themselves vigorously to work for the purpose of discovering what are the actual effects produced on the human character by particular modes of education, by the indulgence of particular habits, by the study of particular books, by society, by emulation, by imitation. Then we might hope to find out what mode of training was most likely to preserve and restore moral health.‡ What he was as a natural philosopher and a moral philosopher, De Augmentis, Lib. 7, Cap. 3. † De Augmentis, Lib. 7, Cap. 2. + De Augmentis, Lib. 7, Cap. 3. 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 theology seem 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 Homoousians and Homoiousians, Monothelites and Nestorians. He lived in an age in which disputes on the most subtle points of divinity excited an intense interest throughout Europe; and no where more than in England. He was placed in the very thick of the conflict. He was in power at the time of the Synod of Dort, and must for months have been daily deafened with talk about election, reprobation, and final perseverance. Yet we do not remember a line in his works from which it can be inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. While the world was resounding with the noise of a disputatious philosophy, and a disputatious theology, the Baconian school, like Alworthy seated between Square and Thwackum, preserved a calm neutrality,-halfscornful, half benevolent, and, content with adding to the sum of practical good, left the war of words to those who liked it. We have dwelt long on the end of the Baconian philosophy, because from this peculiarity 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 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 middle 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 school boy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the clown to the conclusion, that if he sows barley he shall not 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. * Again, we are not inclined to ascribe much practical value to the analysis of the inductive method which Bacon has given in the second book of the Novum Organum.' It is indeed an elaborate and correct analysis. But it is an analysis of that which we are all doing from morning to night, and which we continue to do even in our dreams. A plain man finds his stomach out of order. He never heard Lord Bacon's name. But he proceeds in the strictest conformity with the rules laid down in the second book of the Novum Organum,' and satisfies himself that minced pies have done the mischief. I ate minced pies on Monday ' and Wednesday, and I was kept awake by indigestion all night.' This is the comparentia ad intellectum instantiarum convenientium. I did not eat any on Tuesday and Friday, and I was quite well.' This is the comparentia instantiarum in proximo quæ natura data privantur. I ate very sparingly of them on Sunday, ' and was very slightly indisposed in the evening. But on Christmas ' day I almost dined on them, and was so ill that I was in some danger.' This is the comparentia instantiarum secundum magis et minus. It cannot have been the brandy which I took with them. For I have drunk brandy daily for years without 'being the worse for it.' This is the rejectio naturarum. Our invalid then proceeds to what is termed by Bacon the Vindemiatio, and pronounces that mince pies do not agree with him. We might go on to what are called by Bacon prærogativæ instantiarum. For example: It must be something peculiar to 'minced pies; for I can eat any other pastry without the least 6 * See the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics, and the first of the Metaphysics. '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 over-rated 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 thousand 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 propriety because he knows that one figure is called a metonomy and another a synedoche. A drayman in a passion calls out, You are 'a pretty fellow,' without suspecting that he is uttering irony, and that irony is one of the four primary tropes. The old systems of rhetoric were never regarded by the most experienced and discerning judges as of any use for the purpose of forming an orator. Ego hanc vim intelligo,' said Cicero, 'esse in præceptis omnibus, non ut ea secuti oratores eloquentiæ laudem sint adepti, sed quæ sua sponte homines eloquentes facerent, ea quosdam observasse, atque id egisse; sic esse non eloquentiam ex artificio, 'sed artificium ex eloquentia natum.'* We must own that we encertain the same opinion concerning the study of Logic which Cicero entertained concerning the study of Rhetoric. A man of sense syllogises in celarent and cesare all day long without suspecting it; and, though he may not know what an ignoratio elenchi is, has no difficulty in exposing it whenever he falls in with it; which is likely to be as often as he falls in with a reverend Master of Arts nourished on mode and figure in the cloisters of Oxford. Considered merely as an intellectual feat, the Organum of Aristotle can scarcely be admired too highly. But the more we compare individual with individual, school with school, nation 6 |