through all those ages wherein men of genius and learning principally or even moderately flourished, the smallest part of human industry has been spent upon natural philosophy, though this ought to be esteemed as the great mother of the sciences; for all the rest, if torn from this root, may perhaps be polished and formed for use, but can receive little increase.

"But let none expect any great promotion of the sciences, especially in their effective part, unless natural philosophy be drawn out to particular sciences; and again, unless these particular sciences be brought back again to natural philosophy. From this defect it is that astronomy, optics, music, many mechanical arts, and what seems stranger, even moral and civil philosophy and logic, rise but little above their foundations, and only skim over the varieties and surfaces of things, viz. because after these particular sciences are formed and divided off, they are no longer nourished by natural philosophy, which might give them strength and increase; and therefore no wonder if the sciences thrive not, when separated from their roots.'

It was in consequence of his having so profoundly penetrated the very nature of science that Bacon was able "to lay down the rules for the conduct of experimental inquiries, before any such inquiries had yet been instituted. The power and compass of a mind which could form such a plan beforehand, and trace not merely the outline, but many of the most minute ramifications of sciences which did not yet exist, must be an object of admiration to all succeeding ages."

In his separation of Science from Metaphysics and Theology, and in his conception of Physics as the mother of all the sciences, we see the eminently positive spirit of his works; and this makes him so entirely a modern. He was indeed thoroughly opposed to antiquity, and epigrammatically exposed the fallacy of undue reverence. "The opinion which men entertain of antiquity is a very idle thing," said he, " and almost incongruous to the word;

* Novum Organum, i. Aph. 79, 80.

+ Playfair.

for the old-age and length of days of the world should in reality be accounted antiquity, and ought to be attributed to our own times, not to the youth of the world which it enjoyed among the ancients; for that age, though with respect to us it be ancient. and greater, yet with regard to the world it was new and less.' He bore testimony to the genius of several of the ancients, while he declared that their genius availed them nothing, because wrongly employed; adding, in his usual happy style, “a cripple in the right way may beat a racer in the wrong one. Nay, the fleeter the racer is, who has once missed his way, the farther he leaves it behind." "We have an example,” he says, "in Aristotle, who corrupted natural philosophy with Logic,.. being all along more solicitous how men might defend themselves by answers, and advance something that should be positive in words, than to come at the inward truth of nature. It is true his books of animals, problems, and other pieces, make frequent use of experiments; but then he first pronounced without their assistance, and did not duly consult experience in forming his degrees and axioms; but after he had passed judgment according to his own humor, he winds experience round, and leads her captive to his own opinions. . . Another great reason of the slow progress of the sciences is this: that it is impossible to proceed well in a course where the end is not rightly fixed and defined. Now, the true and genuine end of the sciences is no other than to enrich human life with new inventions and new powers. Fruits and discoveries of works are as the vouchers and securities for the truth of philosophies. But from the philosophies of the Greeks, and their descents through particular sciences, now for the space of so many years scarce a single experiment can be produced tending to accommodate or improve

* It is a point of some interest to ascertain from whom Bacon got the aphorism he frequently quotes: "Antiquity the youth of the world." The idea is in Seneca, and is thus expressed by Roger Bacon: "Quanto juniores tanto perspicaciores, quia juniores, posteriores successione temporum, ingrediuntur labores priorum."-Opus Majus, pars i. cap. 6, p. 9.

the state of man, that may be justly attributed to the speculations and doctrines of their philosophy. . . . Therefore, since the end of the sciences has not hitherto been well defined by any one, we need not wonder if men have erred and wandered in the things subservient to the proper end. Again, if this end had been rightly proposed, yet men have chosen a very wrong and impassable way to proceed in. And it may strike any one with astonishment who duly considers it, that no mortal should hitherto have taken care to open and prepare a way for the human understanding, from sense and a well-conducted experience; but that all things should be left either to the darkness of tradition, the giddy agitation and whirlwind of argument, or else to the uncertain waves of accident, or a vague and uninformed experience. Let any one soberly consider what the way is which men have accustomed themselves to, in the inquiry and discovery of any thing, and he will doubtless find that the manner of invention most commonly used is simple and unartful: or on no other than this, viz. when a person goes upon an inquiry, in the first place he searches out and peruses what has been said upon it by others; in the next place adds his own thoughts thereto; and lastly, with great struggle of the mind, solicits and invokes, as it were, his own spirit to deliver him oracles; which is a method entirely destitute of foundation, and rolls wholly upon opinions. Others may call in the assistance of logic; but this is wholly a nominal assistance, for logic does not discover the principles and capital axioms upon which arts are built, but only such as seem agreeable thereto; and when men are curious and earnest with it, to procure proofs, and discover principles or first axioms, it refers them to faith, or puts them off with this trite and common answer-that every artist must believe in his own art."

Dugald Stewart* well says, "that the idea of the object of physical science (which may be justly regarded as the groundwork

* In the excellent Chapter on Induction, Philos. of Mind, vol. ii. ch. iv. sect. 1.

of Bacon's Novum Organum) differs essentially from what was entertained by the ancients, according to whom 'Philosophy is the science of causes.' If indeed by causes they had meant merely the constant forerunners or antecedents of events, the definition would have coincided nearly with the statement which I have given. But it is evident that by causes they meant such antecedents as were necessarily connected with the effects, and from the knowledge of which the effects might be foreseen and demonstrated. And it was owing to this confusion of the proper objects of Physics and Metaphysics that, neglecting the observation of facts exposed to the examination of their senses, they vainly attempted, by synthetical reasoning, to deduce, as necessary consequences from their supposed causes, the phenomena and laws of nature."

Dugald Stewart also quotes Aristotle's express declaration, that to know the physical cause is also to know the efficient cause; and observes, that from this disposition to confound efficient with physical causes, may be traced the greater part of the theories recorded in the history of philosophy. It is this which has given rise to the attempts, both in ancient and modern times, to account for all the phenomena of moving bodies by impulse; and it is this, also, which has suggested the simpler expedient of explaining them by the agency of minds united with the particles of matter. To this last class of theories may also be referred the explanations of physical phenomena by such causes as sympathies, antipathies, nature's horror of a vacuum, etc., and other phrases borrowed by analogy from the attributes of animated beings.

It was Bacon's constant endeavor, as it has been the cause of his enduring fame, to teach men the real object of Science, and the scope of their faculties, and to furnish them with a proper Method whereon these faculties might be successfully employed. He thus not only stands clearly out in history as the exponent of the long-agitated antagonism to all the ancient and scholastic thinkers, but also as the exponent of the rapidly increasing ten

dency towards positive science. He is essentially modern. All his predecessors, even in their boldest attacks upon ancient philosophy, were themselves closely allied to the spirit of that which they opposed. Ramus is the child of Aristotle, though he raised his hand against his father. But Bacon was modern in culture, in object, and in method. He attacked the ancient philosophy without having thoroughly understood it: he attacked it, because he saw that a method which conducted great intelligences to such absurd conclusions as those then in vogue, must necessarily be false.

“Whence can arise," he asks, "such vagueness and sterility in all the physical systems which have hitherto existed in the world? It is not, certainly, from any thing in nature itself; for the steadiness and regularity of the laws by which it is governed, clearly mark them out as objects of precise and certain knowledge.

"Neither can it arise from any want of ability in those who have pursued such inquiries, many of whom have been men of the highest talent and genius of the ages in which they lived; and it can therefore arise from nothing else but the perverseness and insufficiency of the methods which have been pursued. Men have sought to make a world from their own conceptions, and to draw from their own minds all the materials which they employed; but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have had facts, and not opinions, to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world.

"As things are at present conducted, a sudden transition is made from sensible objects and particular facts to general propositions, which are accounted principles, and round which, as round so many fixed polls, disputation and argument continually revolve. From the propositions thus hastily assumed, all things are derived by a process compendious and precipitate, ill suited to discovery, but wonderfully accommodated to debate.

"The way that promises success is the reverse of this. It requires that we should generalize slowly, going from particular