Chapter XX (3)

[205] Quisque ex phantasiæ suæ cellulis, tanquam ex specu
Platonis, philosophatur; Historia Naturalis, in præfatione
Coleridge has some fine lines in allusion to this hypothesis in
that magnificent effusion of his genius, the introduction to the
second book of Joan of Arc, but withdrawn, after the first
edition, from that poem; where he describes us as “Placed with
our backs to bright reality.” I am not however certain that Bacon
meant this. See De Augmentis, lib. v. c. 4.

|Second book of Novum Organum.|

61. In the second book of the Novum Organum, we come at length to the new logic, the interpretation of nature, as he calls it, or the rules for conducting inquiries in natural philosophy according to his inductive method. It is, as we have said, a fragment of his entire system, and is chiefly confined to the “prerogative instances,”[206] or phænomena which are to be selected, for various reasons, as most likely to aid our investigations of nature. Fifteen of these are used to guide the intellect, five to assist the senses, seven to correct the practice. This second book is written with more than usual want of perspicuity, and though it is intrinsically the Baconian philosophy in a pre-eminent sense, I much doubt whether it is very extensively read, though far more so than it was fifty years since. Playfair, however, has given an excellent abstract of it in his Preliminary Dissertation to the Encyclopædia Britannica, with abundant and judicious illustrations from modern science. Sir John Herschel, in his admirable Discourse on Natural Philosophy, has added a greater number from still more recent discoveries, and has also furnished such a luminous development of the difficulties of the Novum Organum, as had been vainly hoped in former times. The commentator of Bacon should be himself of an original genius in philosophy. These novel illustrations are the more useful, because Bacon himself, from defective knowledge of natural phænomena, and from what, though contrary to his precepts, his ardent fancy could not avoid, a premature hastening to explain the essences of things instead of their proximate causes, has frequently given erroneous examples. It is to be observed on the other hand, that he often anticipates with marvellous sagacity the discoveries of posterity, and that his patient and acute analysis of the phænomena of heat has been deemed a model of his own inductive reasoning. “No one,” observes Playfair, “has done so much in such circumstances.” He was even ignorant of some things that he might have known; he wanted every branch of mathematics; and placed in this remote corner of Europe, without many kindred minds to animate his zeal for physical science, seems hardly to have believed the discoveries of Galileo.

[206] The allusion in “prærogativæ instantiarum” is not to the
English word prerogative, as Sir John Herschel seems to suppose
(Discourse on Natural Philosophy, p. 182), but to the prærogativa
centuria in the Roman comitia, which being first called, though
by lot, was generally found, by some prejudice or superstition,
to influence the rest, which seldom voted otherwise. It is rather
a forced analogy, which is not uncommon with Bacon.

|Confidence of Bacon.|

62. It has happened to Lord Bacon, as it has to many other writers, that he has been extolled for qualities by no means characteristic of his mind. The first aphorism of the Novum Organum, so frequently quoted, “Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, performs and understands so much as he has collected concerning the order of nature by observation or reason, nor do his power or his knowledge extend farther,” has seemed to bespeak an extreme sobriety of imagination, a willingness to acquiesce in registering the phænomena of nature without seeking a revelation of her secrets. And nothing is more true than that such was the cautious and patient course of inquiry prescribed by him to all the genuine disciples of his inductive method. But he was far from being one of those humble philosophers who would limit human science to the enumeration of particular facts. He had, on the contrary, vast hopes of the human intellect under the guidance of his new logic. The Latens Schematismus, or intrinsic configuration of bodies, the Latens processus ad formam, or transitional operation through which they pass from one form, or condition of nature, to another, would one day, as he hoped, be brought to light; and this not, of course, by simple observation of the senses, nor even by assistance of instruments, concerning the utility of which he was rather sceptical, but by a rigorous application of exclusive and affirmative propositions to the actual phænomena by the inductive method. “It appears,” says Playfair, “that Bacon placed the ultimate object of philosophy too high, and too much out of the reach of man, even when his exertions are most skilfully conducted. He seems to have thought, that by giving a proper direction to our researches, and carrying them on according to the inductive method, we should arrive at the knowledge of the essences of the powers and qualities residing in bodies; that we should, for instance, become acquainted with the essence of heat, of cold, of colour, of transparency. The fact however is that, in as far as science has yet advanced, no one essence has been discovered, either as to matter in general, or as to any of its more extensive modifications. We are yet in doubt whether heat is a peculiar motion of the minute parts of bodies, as Bacon himself conceived it to be, or something emitted or radiated from their surfaces, or, lastly, the vibrations of an elastic medium by which they are penetrated and surrounded.”

|Almost justified of late.|

63. It requires a very extensive survey of the actual dominion of science, and a great sagacity to judge, even in the loosest manner, what is beyond the possible limits of human knowledge. Certainly, since the time when this passage was written by Playfair, more steps have been made towards realising the sanguine anticipations of Bacon than in the two centuries that had elapsed since the publication of the Novum Organum. We do not yet _know_ the real nature of heat, but few would pronounce it impossible or even unlikely that we may know it, in the same sense that we know other physical realities not immediately perceptible, before many years shall have expired. The atomic theory of Dalton, the laws of crystalline substances discovered by Häuy, the development of others still subtler by Mitscherlich, instead of exhibiting, as the older philosophy had done, the idola rerum, the sensible appearances of concrete substance, radiations from the internal glory, admit us, as it were, to stand within the vestibule of nature’s temple, and to gaze on the very curtain of the shrine. If indeed we could know the internal structure of one primary atom, and could tell, not of course by immediate testimony of sense, but by legitimate inference from it, through what constant laws its component molecules, the atoms of atoms, attract, retain, and repel each other, we should have before our mental vision not only the Latens Schematismus, the real configuration of substances, but their _form_, or efficient nature, and could give as perfect a definition of any one of them, of gold for example, as we can of a cone or parallelogram. The recent discoveries of animal and vegetable development, and especially the happy application of the microscope to observing chemical and organic changes in their actual course, are equally remarkable advances towards a knowledge of the Latens processus ad formam, the corpuscular motions by which all change must be accomplished, and are in fact a great deal more than Bacon himself would have deemed possible.[207]

[207] By the Latens processus, he meant only what is the natural
operation by which one form or condition of being is induced upon
another. Thus, when the surface of iron becomes rusty, or when
water is converted into steam some change has taken place, a
_latent_ _progress_ from one form to another. This, in numberless
cases, we can now answer, at least to a very great extent, by the
science of chemistry.

|But should be kept within bounds.|

64. These astonishing revelations of natural mysteries, fresh tidings of which crowd in upon us every day, may be likely to overwhelm all sober hesitation as to the capacities of the human mind, and to bring back that confidence which Bacon, in so much less favourable circumstances, has ventured to feel. There seem, however, to be good reasons for keeping within bounds this expectation of future improvement, which, as it has sometimes been announced in unqualified phrases, is hardly more philosophical than the vulgar supposition that the capacities of mankind are almost stationary. The phænomena of nature indeed, in all their possible combinations, are so infinite, in a popular sense of the word, that during no period, to which the human species can be conceived to reach, would they be entirely collected and registered. The case is still stronger as to the secret agencies and processes by means of which their phænomena are displayed. These have as yet, in no one instance, so far as I know, been fully ascertained. “Microscopes,” says Herschel, “have been constructed which magnify more than one thousand times in linear dimension, so that the smallest visible grain of sand may be enlarged to the appearance of one million times more bulky; yet the only impression we receive by viewing it through such a magnifier is that it reminds us of some vast fragment of a rock; while the intimate structure on which depends its colour, its hardness, and its chemical properties, remains still concealed; we do not seem to have made even an approach to a closer analysis of it by any such scrutiny.”[208]

[208] Discourse on Nat. Philos., p. 191.

|Limits to our knowledge by sense.|

65. The instance here chosen is not the most favourable for the experimental philosopher. He might perhaps hope to gain more knowledge by applying the best microscope to a regular crystal or to an organised substance. And it is impossible not to regret that the great discovery of the solar microscope has been either so imperfectly turned to account by philosophers, or has disappointed their hopes of exhibiting the mechanism of nature with the distinctness they require. But there is evidently a fundamental limitation of physical science, arising from those of the bodily senses and of muscular motions. The nicest instruments must be constructed and directed by the human hand; the range of the finest glasses must have a limit not only in their own natural structure but in that of the human eye. But no theory in science will be acknowledged to deserve any regard, except as it is drawn immediately, and by an exclusive process, from the phænomena which our senses report to us. Thus, the regular observation of definite proportions in chemical combination has suggested the atomic theory; and even this has been sceptically accepted by our cautious school of philosophy. If we are ever to go farther into the molecular analysis of substances, it must be through the means and upon the authority of new discoveries exhibited to our senses in experiment. But the existing powers of exhibiting or compelling nature by instruments, vast as they appear to us, and wonderful as has been their efficacy in many respects, have done little for many years past in diminishing the number of substances reputed to be simple; and with strong reasons to suspect that some of these, at least, yield to the crucible of nature, our electric batteries have up to this hour played innocuously round their heads.

66. Bacon has thrown out, once or twice, a hint at a single principle, a summary law of nature, as if all subordinate causes resolved themselves into one great process, according to which God works his will in the universe: Opus quod operatur Deus a principio usque ad finem. The natural tendency towards simplification, and what we consider as harmony, in our philosophical systems, which Lord Bacon himself reckons among the _idola tribûs_, the fallacies incident to the species, has led some to favour this unity of physical law. Impact and gravity have each had their supporters. But we are as yet at a great distance from establishing such a generalization, nor does it appear by any means probable that it will ever assume any simple form.

|Inductive logic; whether confined to physics.|

67. The close connexion of the inductive process recommended by Bacon with natural philosophy in the common sense of that word, and the general selection of his examples for illustration from that science, have given rise to a question, whether he comprehended metaphysical and moral philosophy within the scope of his inquiry.[209] That they formed a part of the Instauration of Sciences, and therefore of the Baconian philosophy in the fullest sense of the word, is obvious from the fact that a large proportion of the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum is dedicated to those subjects; and it is not less so that the _idola_ of the Novum Organum are at least as apt to deceive us in moral as in physical argument. The question, therefore, can only be raised as to the peculiar method of conducting investigations, which is considered as his own. This would, however, appear to have been decided by himself in very positive language. “It may be doubted, rather than objected, by some, whether we look to the perfection, by means of our method, of natural philosophy alone, or of the other sciences also, of logic, of ethics, of politics. But we certainly mean what has here been said, to be understood as to them all; and as the ordinary logic, which proceeds by syllogism, does not relate to physical only, but to every other science; so ours, which proceeds by induction, comprizes them all. For we as much collect a history and form tables concerning anger, fear, shame and the like, and also concerning examples from civil life, and as much concerning the intellectual operations of memory, combination and partition, judgment and the others, as concerning heat and cold, or light, or vegetation, or such things.”[210] But he proceeds to intimate, as far as I understand the next sentence, that, although his method or logic, strictly speaking, is applicable to other subjects, it is his immediate object to inquire into the properties of natural things, or what is generally meant by physics. To this indeed the second book of the Novum Organum, and the portions that he completed of the remaining parts of the Instauratio Magna bear witness.

[209] This question was discussed some years since by the late
editor of the Edinburgh Review on one side, and by Dugald Stewart
on the other. See Edinburgh Review, vol. iii., p. 273, and the
Preliminary Dissertation to Stewart’s Philosophical Essays.

[210] Etiam dubitabit quispiam potius quam objiciet, utrum nos de
naturali tantum philosophia, an etiam de scientiis reliquis,
logicis, ethicis, politicis, secundum viam nostram perficiendis
loquamur. At nos certè de universis hæc, quæ dictasunt,
intelligimus; atque quemadmodum vulgaris logica, quæ regit res
per syllogismum, non tantum ad naturales, sed ad omnes scientias
pertinet, ita et nostra, quæ procedit per inductionem, omnia
complectitur. Tam enim Historiam et Tabulas Inveniendi conficimus
de ira, metu et verecundia et similibus, ac etiam de exemplis
rerum civilium; nec minùs de motibus mentalibus memoriæ,
compositionis et divisionis, judicii et reliquorum, quam de
calido et frigido, aut luce, aut vegetatione aut similibus. Sed
tamen cum nostra ratio interpretandi, post historiam præparatam
et ordinatam, non mentis tantum motus et discursus, ut logica
vulgaris, sed et rerum naturam intueatur, ita mentem regimus ut
ad rerum naturam se aptis per omnia modis applicare possit. Atque
propterea multa et diversa in doctrina interpretationis
præcipimus. quæ ad subjecti, de quo inquirimus, qualitatem et
conditionem modum inveniendi nonnulla ex parte applicent. Nov.
Org. i. 127.

|Baconian philosophy built on observation and experiment.|

68. It by no means follows, because the leading principles of the inductive philosophy are applicable to other topics of inquiry than what is usually comprehended under the name of physics, that we can employ all the prærogativæ instantiarum, and still less the peculiar rules for conducting experiments which Bacon has given us, in moral, or even psychological disquisitions. Many of them are plainly referrible to particular manipulations, or at most to limited subjects of chemical theory. And the frequent occurrence of passages which show Lord Bacon’s fondness for experimental processes, seem to have led some to consider his peculiar methods as more exclusively related to such modes of inquiry than they really are. But when the Baconian philosophy is said to be experimental, we are to remember that experiment is only better than what we may call passive observation, because it enlarges our capacity of observing with exactness and expedition. The reasoning is grounded on observation in both cases. In astronomy, where nature remarkably presents the objects of our observation without liability to error or uncertain delay, we may reason on the inductive principle as well as in sciences that require tentative operations. The inference drawn from the difference of time in the occultation of the satellites of Jupiter at different seasons, in favour of the Copernican theory and against the instantaneous motion of light, is an induction of the same kind with any that could be derived from an _experimentum crucis_. It is an exclusion of those hypotheses which might solve many phænomena, but fail to explain those immediately observed.

|Advantages of the latter.|

69. But astronomy, from the comparative solitariness, if we may so say, of all its phænomena, and the simplicity of their laws, has an advantage that is rarely found in sciences of mere observation. Bacon justly gave to experiment, or the interrogation of nature, compelling her to give up her secrets, a decided preference whenever it can be employed; and it is unquestionably true that the inductive method is tedious, if not uncertain, when it cannot resort to so compendious a process. One of the subjects selected by Bacon in the third part of the Instauration as specimens of the method by which an inquiry into nature should be conducted, the History of Winds, does not greatly admit of experiments; and the very slow progress of meteorology, which has yet hardly deserved the name of a science, when compared with that of chemistry or optics, will illustrate the difficulties of employing the inductive method without their aid. It is not, therefore, that Lord Bacon’s method of philosophising is properly experimental, but that by experiment it is most successfully displayed.

|Sometimes applicable to philosophy of human mind.|

|Less so to politics and morals.|

70. It will follow from hence that in proportion as, in any matter of inquiry, we can separate, in what we examine, the determining conditions, or law of form, from everything extraneous, we shall be more able to use the Baconian method with advantage. In metaphysics, or what Stewart would have called the philosophy of the human mind, there seems much in its own nature capable of being subjected to the inductive reasoning. Such are those facts which, by their intimate connection with physiology, or the laws of the bodily frame, fall properly within the province of the physician. In these, though exact observation is chiefly required, it is often practicable to shorten its process by experiment. And another important illustration may be given from the education of children, considered as a science of rules deduced from observation; wherein also we are frequently more able to substitute experiment for mere experience, than with mankind in general, whom we may observe at a distance, but cannot control. In politics, as well as in moral prudence, we can seldom do more than this. It seems however practicable to apply the close attention enforced by Bacon, and the careful arrangement and comparison of phænomena, which are the basis of his induction, to these subjects. Thus, if the circumstances of all popular seditions recorded in history were to be carefully collected with great regard to the probability of evidence, and to any peculiarity that may have affected the results, it might be easy to perceive such a connection of antecedent and subsequent events in the great plurality of instances, as would reasonably lead us to form probable inferences as to similar tumults when they should occur. This has sometimes been done, with less universality, and with much less accuracy than the Baconian method requires, by such theoretical writers on politics as Machiavel and Bodin. But it has been apt to degenerate into pedantry, and to disappoint the practical statesman, who commonly rejects it with scorn; partly because civil history is itself defective, seldom giving a just view of events, and still less frequently of the motives of those concerned in them; partly because the history of mankind is far less copious than that of nature, and in much that relates to politics, has not yet had time to furnish the groundwork of a sufficient induction; but partly also from some distinctive circumstances, which affect our reasonings in moral far more than in physical science, and which deserve to be considered, so far at least as to sketch the arguments that might be employed.

|Induction less conclusive in these subjects.|

71. The Baconian logic, as has been already said, deduces universal principles from select observation, that is, from particular, and, in some cases of experiment, from singular instances. It may easily appear to one conversant with the syllogistic method less legitimate than the old induction which proceeded by an exhaustive enumeration of particulars, and at most warranting but a probable conclusion. The answer to this objection can only be found in the acknowledged uniformity of the laws of nature, so that whatever has once occurred will, under absolutely similar circumstances, always occur again. This may be called the suppressed premise of every Baconian enthymem, every inference from observation of phænomena, which extends beyond the particular case. When it is once ascertained that water is composed of one proportion of oxygen to one of hydrogen, we never doubt but that such are its invariable constituents. We may repeat the experiment to secure ourselves against the risk of error in the operation or of some unperceived condition that may have affected the result; but when a sufficient number of trials has secured us against this, an invariable law of nature is inferred from the particular instance; nobody conceives that one pint of pure water _can_ be of a different composition from another. All men, even the most rude, reason upon this primary maxim; but they reason inconclusively from misapprehending the true relations of cause and effect in the phænomena to which they direct their attention. It is by the sagacity and ingenuity with which Bacon has excluded the various sources of error, and disengaged the true cause, that this method is distinguished from that which the vulgar practise.

|Reasons for this difference.|

72. It is required, however, for the validity of this method, first that there should be a strict uniformity in the general laws of nature, from which we can infer that what has been will, in the same conditions, be again; and secondly, that we shall be able to perceive and estimate all the conditions with an entire and exclusive knowledge. The first is granted in all physical phænomena; but in those which we cannot submit to experiment, or investigate by some such method as Bacon has pointed out, we often find our philosophy at fault for want of the second. Such is at present the case with respect to many parts of chemistry; for example, that of organic substances, which we can analyse, but as yet can in very few instances recompose. We do not know, and, if we did know, could not perhaps command, the entire conditions of organic bodies (even structurally, not as living), the _form_, as Bacon calls it, of blood, or milk, or oak galls. But in attempting to subject the actions of men to this inductive philosophy, we are arrested by the want of both the necessary requisitions. Matter can only be diverted from its obedience to unvarying laws by the control of mind; but we have to inquire whether mind is equally the passive instrument of any law. We have to open the great problem of human liberty, and must deny even a disturbing force to the will before we can assume that all actions of mankind must, under given conditions, preserve the same necessary train of sequences as a molecule of matter. But if this be answered affirmatively, we are still almost as far removed from a conclusive result as before. We cannot without contradicting every day experience, maintain that all men are determined alike by the same exterior circumstances; we must have recourse to the differences of temperament, of physical constitution, of casual or habitual association. The former alone, however, are, at the best, subject to our observation, either at the time, or, as is most common, through testimony; of the latter, no being, which does not watch the movements of the soul itself, can reach more than a probable conjecture. Sylla resigned the dictatorship, therefore all men, in the circumstances of Sylla, will do the same, is an argument false in one sense of the word circumstances, and useless at least in any other. It is doubted by many, whether meteorology will ever be well understood, on account of the complexity of the forces concerned, and their remoteness from the apprehension of the senses. Do not the same difficulties apply to human affairs? And while we reflect on these difficulties, to which we must add those which spring from the scantiness of our means of observation, the defectiveness and falsehood of testimony, especially what is called historical, and a thousand other errors to which the various “idola of the world and the cave” expose us, we shall rather be astonished that so many probable rules of civil prudence have been treasured up and confirmed by experience than disposed to give them a higher place in philosophy than they can claim.

|Considerations on the other side.|

73. It might be alleged in reply to these considerations, that admitting the absence of a strictly scientific certainty in moral reasoning, we have yet, as seems acknowledged on the other side, a great body of probable inferences, in the extensive knowledge and sagacious application of which most of human wisdom consists. And all that is required of us in dealing either with moral evidence or with the conclusions we draw from it, is to estimate the probability of neither too high; an error from which the severe and patient discipline of the inductive philosophy is most likely to secure us. It would be added by some, that the theory of probabilities deduces a wonderful degree of certainty from things very uncertain, when a sufficient number of experiments can be made; and thus, that events depending upon the will of mankind, even under circumstances the most anomalous and apparently irreducible to principles, may be calculated with a precision inexplicable to any one who has paid little attention to the subject. This, perhaps, may appear rather a curious application of mathematical science, than one from which our moral reasonings are likely to derive much benefit, especially as the conditions under which a very high probability can mathematically be obtained, involve a greater number of trials than experience will generally furnish. It is, nevertheless, a field that deserves to be more fully explored: the success of those who have attempted to apply analytical processes to moral probabilities has not hitherto been very encouraging, inasmuch as they have often come to results falsified by experience; but a more scrupulous regard to all the conditions of each problem may perhaps obviate many sources of error.[211]

[211] A calculation was published not long since, said to be on
the authority of an eminent living philosopher, according to
which, granting a moderate probability that each of twelve jurors
would decide rightly, the chances in favour of the rectitude of
their unanimous verdict were made something extravagantly high, I
think about 8000 to 1. It is more easy to perceive the the
fallacies of this pretended demonstration, than to explain how a
man of great acuteness should have overlooked them. One among
many is that it assumes the giving a verdict at all to be
voluntary, whereas, in practice, the jury must decide one way or
the other. We must deduct, therefore, a fraction expressing the
probability that some of the twelve have wrongly conceded their
opinions to the rest. One danger of this rather favourite
application of mathematical principles to moral probabilities, as
indeed it is of statistical tables (a remark of far wider
extent), is that, by considering mankind merely as units, it
practically habituates the mind to a moral and social levelling,
as inconsistent with a just estimate of men as it is
characteristic of the present age.

|Result of the whole.|

74. It seems upon the whole that we should neither conceive the inductive method to be useless in regard to any subject but physical science, nor deny the peculiar advantages it possesses in those inquiries rather than others. What must in all studies be important, is the habit of turning round the subject of our investigation in every light, the observation of everything that is peculiar, the exclusion of all that we find on reflection to be extraneous. In historical and antiquarian researches, in all critical examination which turns upon facts, in the scrutiny of judicial evidence, a great part of Lord Bacon’s method, not, of course, all the experimental rules of the Novum Organum, has, as I conceive, a legitimate application.[212] I would refer any one who may doubt this to his History of Winds, as one sample of what we mean by the Baconian method, and ask whether a kind of investigation, analogous to what is therein pursued for the sake of eliciting physical truths, might not be employed in any analytical process where general or even particular facts are sought to be known. Or if an example is required of such an investigation, let us look at the copious induction from the past and actual history of mankind upon which Malthus established his general theory of the causes which have retarded the natural progress of population. Upon all these subjects before-mentioned, there has been an astonishing improvement in the reasoning of the learned, and perhaps of the world at large since the time of Bacon, though much remains very defective. In what degree it may be owing to the prevalence of a physical philosophy founded upon his inductive logic, it might not be uninteresting to inquire.[213]

[212] The _principle_ of Bacon’s prerogative instances, and
perhaps in some cases a very analogous application of them,
appear to hold in our inquiries into historical evidence. The
fact sought to be ascertained in the one subject corresponds to
the physical law in the other. The testimonies, as we, though
rather laxly, call them, or passages in books from which we infer
the fact, correspond to the observations or experiments from
which we deduce the law. The necessity of a sufficient induction
by searching for all proof that may bear on the question, is as
manifest in one case as in the other. The exclusion of precarious
and inconclusive evidence is alike indispensable in both. The
selection of prerogative instances, or such as carry with them
satisfactory conviction, requires the same sort of inventive and
reasoning powers. It is easy to illustrate this by examples.
Thus, in the controversy concerning the Icon Basilike, the
admission of Gauden’s claim by Lord Clarendon is in the nature of
a _prerogative instance_; it renders the supposition of the
falsehood of that claim highly improbable. But the many second
hand and hearsay testimonies which may be alleged on the other
side, to prove that the book was written by King Charles, are not
prerogative instances, because their falsehood will be found to
involve very little improbability. So, in a different
controversy, the silence of some of the fathers as to the text,
commonly called, of the three heavenly witnesses, even while
expounding the context of the passage, is a _quasi-prerogative
instance_; a decisive proof that they did not know it, or did not
believe it genuine; because if they did, no motive can be
conceived for the omission. But the silence of Laurentius Valla
as to its absence from the manuscripts on which he commented, is
no prerogative instance to prove that it was contained in them;
because it is easy to perceive that he might have motives for
saying nothing; and, though the negative argument, as it is
called, or inference that a fact is not true, because such and
such persons have not mentioned it, is, taken generally, weaker
than positive testimony, it will frequently supply prerogative
instances where the latter does not. Launoy, in a little
treatise, De Auctoritate Negantis Argumenti, which displays more
plain sense than ingenuity or philosophy, lays it down that a
fact of a public nature, which is not mentioned by any writer
within 200 years of the time, supposing, of course, that there is
extant a competent number of writers who would naturally have
mentioned it, is not to be believed. The period seems rather
arbitrary, and was possibly so considered by himself; but the
general principle is of the highest importance in historical
criticism. Thus, in the once celebrated question of Pope Joan,
the silence of all writers near the time as to so wonderful a
fact, was justly deemed a kind of _prerogative_ argument, when
set in opposition to the many repetitions of the story in later
ages. But the silence of Gildas and Bede as to the victories of
Arthur is no such argument against their reality, because they
were not under an historical obligation, or any strong motive,
which would prevent their silence. Generally speaking, the more
anomalous and interesting an event is, the stronger is the
argument against its truth from the silence of contemporaries, on
account of the propensity of mankind to believe and recount the
marvellous; and the weaker is the argument from the testimony of
later times for the same reason. A similar analogy holds also in
jurisprudence. The principle of our law, rejecting hearsay and
secondary evidence, is founded on the Baconian rule. Fifty
persons may depose that they have heard of a fact or of its
circumstances; but the eye-witness is the prerogative instance.
It would carry us too far to develop this at length, even if I
were fully prepared to do so; but this much may lead us to think,
that whoever shall fill up that lamentable _desideratum_, the
logic of evidence, ought to have familiarised himself with the
Novum Organum.

[213] “The effects which Bacon’s writings have hitherto produced,
have indeed been far more conspicuous in physics than in the
science of mind. Even here, however, they have been great and
most important, as well as in some collateral branches of
knowledge, such as natural jurisprudence, political economy,
criticism and morals, which spring up from the same root, or
rather which are branches of that tree of which the science of
mind is the trunk.” Stewart’s Philosophical Essays, Prelim.
Dissertation. The principal advantage, perhaps, of those habits
of reasoning which the Baconian methods, whether learned directly
or through the many disciples of that school, have a tendency to
generate, is that they render men cautious and painstaking in the
pursuit of truth, and therefore restrain them from deciding too
soon. Nemo reperitur qui in rebus ipsis et experientia moram
fecerit legitimam. These words are more frequently true of moral
and political reasoners than of any others. Men apply historical
or personal experience, but they apply it hastily, and without
giving themselves time for either a copious or an exact
induction; the great majority being too much influenced by
passion, party-spirit, or vanity, or perhaps by affections
morally right, but not the less dangerous in reasoning, to
maintain the patient and dispassionate suspense of judgment
(ακαταληψια [akatalêpsia]), which ought to be the condition of
our enquiries.

|Bacon’s aptitude for moral subjects.|

75. It is probable that Lord Bacon never much followed up in his own mind that application of his method to psychological, and still less to moral and political subjects, which he has declared himself to intend. The distribution of the Instauratio Magna, which he has prefixed to it, relates wholly to physical science. He has in no one instance given an example, in the Novum Organum, from moral philosophy, and one only, that of artificial memory, from what he would have called logic.[214] But we must constantly remember that the philosophy of Bacon was left exceedingly incomplete. Many lives would not have sufficed for what he had planned, and he gave only the _horæ subsecivæ_ of his own. It is evident that he had turned his thoughts to physical philosophy rather for an exercise of his reasoning faculties, and out of his insatiable thirst for knowledge, than from any peculiar aptitude for their subjects, much less any advantage of opportunity for their cultivation. He was more eminently the philosopher of human, than of general nature. Hence, he is exact as well as profound in all his reflections on civil life and mankind, while his conjectures in natural philosophy, though often very acute, are apt to wander far from the truth in consequence of his defective acquaintance with the phænomena of nature. His Centuries of Natural History give abundant proof of this. He is, in all these inquiries, like one doubtfully, and by degrees, making out a distant prospect, but often deceived by the haze. But if we compare what may be found in the sixth, seventh, and eighth books De Augmentis, in the Essays, the History of Henry VII., and the various short treatises contained in his works, on moral and political wisdom, and on human nature, from experience of which all such wisdom is drawn, with the Rhetoric, Ethics, and Politics of Aristotle, or with the historians most celebrated for their deep insight into civil society and human character, with Thucydides, Tacitus, Philip de Comines, Machiavel, Davila, Hume, we shall, I think, find that one man may almost be compared with all of these together. When Galileo is named as equal to Bacon, it is to be remembered that Galileo was no moral or political philosopher, and in this department Leibnitz certainly falls very short of Bacon. Burke, perhaps, comes, of all modern writers, the nearest to him; but though Bacon may not be more profound than Burke, he is still more copious and comprehensive.

[214] Nov. Organ. ii. 26. It may however be observed, that we
find a few passages in the ethical part of De Augmentis, lib.
vii. cap. 3, which show that he had some notions of moral
induction germinating in his mind.

|Comparison of Bacon and Galileo.|

76. The comparison of Bacon and Galileo is naturally built upon the influence which, in the same age they exerted in overthrowing the philosophy of the schools, and in founding that new discipline of real science which has rendered the last centuries glorious. Hume has given the preference to the latter, who made accessions to the domain of human knowledge so splendid, so inaccessible to cavil, so unequivocal in their results, that the majority of mankind would perhaps be carried along with this decision. There seems however to be no doubt that the mind of Bacon was more comprehensive and profound. But these comparisons are apt to involve _incommensurable_ relations. In their own intellectual characters, they bore no great resemblance to each other. Bacon had scarce any knowledge of geometry, and so far ranks much below not only Galileo, but Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz, all signalised by wonderful discoveries in the science of quantity, or in that part of physics which employs it. He has, in one of the profound aphorisms of the Novum Organum, distinguished the two species of philosophical genius, one more apt to perceive the differences of things, the other their analogies. In a mind of the highest order neither of these powers will be really deficient, and his own inductive method is at once the best exercise of both, and the best safeguard against the excess of either. But upon the whole, it may certainly be said, that the genius of Lord Bacon was naturally more inclined to collect the resemblances of nature than to note her differences. This is the case with men like him of sanguine temper, warm fancy, and brilliant wit; but it is not the frame of mind which is best suited to strict reasoning.

77. It is no proof of a solid acquaintance with Lord Bacon’s philosophy, to deify his name as the ancient schools did those of their founders, or even to exaggerate the powers of his genius. Powers they were surprisingly great, yet limited in their range, and not in all respects equal; nor could they overcome every impediment of circumstance. Even of Bacon it may be said, that he attempted more than he has achieved, and perhaps more than he clearly apprehended. His objects appear sometimes indistinct, and I am not sure that they are always consistent. In the Advancement of Learning, he aspired to fill up, or at least to indicate, the deficiencies in every department of knowledge, he gradually confined himself to philosophy, and at length to physics. But few of his works can be deemed complete, not even the treatise De Augmentis, which comes nearer to it than most of the rest. Hence, the study of Lord Bacon is difficult and not, as I conceive, very well adapted to those who have made no progress whatever in the exact sciences, nor accustomed themselves to independent thinking. They have never been made a textbook in our universities; though after a judicious course of preparatory studies, by which I mean a good foundation in geometry and the philosophical principles of grammar, the first book of the Novum Organum might be very advantageously combined with the instruction of an enlightened lecturer.[215]

[215] It by no means is to be inferred, that because the actual
text of Bacon is not always such as can be well understood by
very young men, I object to their being led to the real
principles of inductive philosophy, which alone will teach them
to think, firmly but not presumptuously, for themselves. Few
defects, on the contrary, in our system of education are more
visible than the want of an adequate course of logic; and this is
not likely to be rectified so long as the Aristotelian methods
challenge that denomination exclusively of all other aids to the
reasoning faculties. The position that nothing else is to be
called logic, were it even agreeable to the derivation of the
word, which it is not, or to the usage of the ancients, which is
by no means uniformly the case, or to that of modern philosophy
and correct language, which is certainly not at all the case, is
no answer to the question, whether what we call logic does not
deserve to be taught at all.

A living writer of high reputation, who has at least fully
understood his own subject, and illustrated it better than his
predecessors from a more enlarged reading and thinking, wherein
his own acuteness has been improved by the writers of the
Baconian school, has been unfortunately instrumental, by the very
merits of his treatise on Logic, in keeping up the prejudices on
this subject, which have generally been deemed characteristic of
the university to which he belonged. All the reflection I have
been able to give to the subject has convinced me of the
inefficacy of the syllogistic art in enabling us to think rightly
for ourselves, or, which is part of thinking rightly, in
detecting those fallacies of others which might impose on our
understanding before we have acquired that art. It has been often
alleged, and, as far as I can judge, with perfect truth, that no
man, who can be worth answering, ever commits, except through
mere inadvertence, any paralogisms which the common logic serves
to point out. It is easy enough to construct syllogisms which sin
against its rules; but the question is, by whom they were
employed. It is not uncommon, as I am aware, to represent an
adversary as reasoning illogically; but this is generally
effected by putting his argument into our own words. The great
fault of all, over-induction, or the assertion of a general
premise upon an insufficient examination of particulars, cannot
be discovered or cured by any _logical_ skill; and this is
the error into which men really fall, not that of omitting to
_distribute the middle_ term, though it comes in effect, and
often in appearance, to the same thing. I do not contend that the
rules of syllogism, which are very short and simple, ought not to
be learned; or that there may not be some advantage in
occasionally stating our own argument, or calling on another to
state his, in a regular form (an advantage, however, rather
dialectical, which is, in other words, rhetorical, than one which
affects the reasoning faculties themselves): nor do I deny that
it is philosophically worth while to know that all _general
reasoning by words_ may be reduced into syllogism, as it is to
know that most of geometry may be resolved into the superposition
of equal triangles; but to represent this portion of logical
science as the whole, appears to me almost like teaching the
scholar Euclid’s axioms, and the axiomatic theorem to which I
have alluded, and calling this the science of geometry. The
following passage from the Port-Royal logic is very judicious and
candid, giving as much to the Aristotelian system as it deserves:
“Cette partie, que nous avons maintenant à traiter, qui comprend
les règles du raisonnement, est estimée la plus importante de la
logique, et c’est presque l’unique qu’on y traite avec quelque
soin; mais il y a sujet de douter si elle est aussi utile qu’on
se l’imagine. La plupart des erreurs des hommes, comme nous avons
déjà dit ailleurs, viennent bien plus de ce qu’ils raisonnent sur
de faux principes, que non pas de ce qu’ils raisonnent mal
suivant leurs principes. Il arrive rarement qu’on se laisse
tromper par des raisonnemens qui ne soient faux que parce que la
conséquence en est mal tirée; et ceux qui ne seroient pas
capables d’en reconnoître la fausseté par la seule lumière de la
raison, ne le seroient pas ordinairement d’entendre les règles
que l’on en donne, et encore moins de les appliquer. Néanmoins,
quand on ne considéreroit ces règles que comme des vérités
spéculatives, elles serviroient toujours à exercer l’esprit; et
de plus, on ne peut nier qu’elles n’aient quelque usage en
quelques rencontres, et à l’égard de quelques personnes, qui,
étant d’un naturel vif et pénétrant, ne se laissent quelquefois
tromper par des fausses conséquences, que faute d’attention, à
quoi la réflexion qu’ils feroient sur ces règles, seroit capable
de remédier.” Art de Penser, part iii. How different is this
sensible passage from one quoted from some anonymous writer in
Whateley’s Logic, p. 34. “A fallacy consists of an ingenious
mixture of truth and falsehood so entangled, so intimately
blended, that the fallacy is, in the chemical phrase, held in
solution _one drop of sound logic_ is that test which
immediately disunites them, makes the foreign substance visible,
and precipitates it to the bottom.” One fallacy, it might be
answered, as common as any, is the _false analogy_ the
misleading the mind by a comparison, where there is no real
proportion or resemblance. The chemist’s test is the
_necessary_ means of detecting the foreign substance; if the
“drop of sound logic” be such, it is strange that lawyers,
mathematicians, and mankind in general, should so sparingly
employ it; the fact being notorious, that those most eminent for
strong reasoning powers are rarely conversant with the
syllogistic method. It is also well known, that these “intimately
blended mixtures of truth and falsehood” deceive no man of plain
sense. So much for the _test_.

|His prejudice against mathematics.|

78. The ignorance of Bacon in mathematics, and, what was much worse, his inadequate notions of their utility, must be reckoned among the chief defects in his philosophical writings. In a remarkable passage of the Advancement of Learning, he held mathematics to be a part of metaphysics; but the place of this is altered in the Latin, and they are treated as merely auxiliary or instrumental to physical inquiry. He had some prejudice against pure mathematics, and thought they had been unduly elevated in comparison with the realities of nature. “I know not,” he says, “how it has arisen that mathematics and logic, which ought to be the serving-maids of physical philosophy, yet affecting to vaunt the certainty that belongs to them, presume to exercise a dominion over her.” It is surely very erroneous to speak of geometry, which relates to the objective realities of space, and to natural objects so far as extended, as a mere handmaid of physical philosophy, and not rather a part of it. Playfair has made some good remarks on the advantages derived to experimental philosophy itself from the mere application of geometry and algebra. And one of the reflections which this ought to excite is, that we are not to conceive, as some hastily do, that there can be no real utility to mankind, even of that kind of utility which consists in multiplying the conveniences and luxuries of life, springing from theoretical and speculative inquiry. The history of algebra, so barren in the days of Tartaglia and Vieta, so productive of _wealth_, when applied to dynamical calculations in our own, may be a sufficient answer.

|Bacon’s excess of wit.|

79. One of the petty blemishes which, though lost in the splendour of Lord Bacon’s excellencies, it is not unfair to mention, is connected with the peculiar characteristics of his mind; he is sometimes too metaphorical and witty. His remarkable talent for discovering analogies seems to have inspired him with too much regard to them as arguments, even when they must appear to any common reader fanciful and far-fetched. His terminology, chiefly for the same reason, is often a little affected, and, in Latin, rather barbarous. The divisions of his prerogative instances in the Novum Organum are not always founded upon intelligible distinctions. And the general obscurity of the style, neither himself nor his assistants being good masters of the Latin language, which at the best is never flexible or copious enough for our philosophy, renders the perusal of both his great works too laborious for the impatient reader. Brucker has well observed that the Novum Organum has been neglected by the generality, and proved of far less service than it would otherwise have been in philosophy, in consequence of these very defects, as well as the real depths of the author’s mind.[216]

[216] Legenda ipsa nobilissima tractatio ab illis est, qui in
rerum naturalium inquisitione feliciter progredi cupiunt. Quæ si
paulo plus luminis et perspicuitatis haberet, et novorum
terminorum et partitionum artificio lectorem non remoraretur,
longè plura, quam factum est, contulisset ad philosophiæ
emendationem. His enim obstantibus a plerisque hoc organum
neglectum est. Hist. Philos. v. 99.

|Fame of Bacon on the Continent.|