hereafter to be discovered, but from the probable result of transferring, compounding, and variously applying those laws and operations which were already known. Lord Bacon also derived encouragement from reflecting on the immense expenditure of time, genius, and property, that had been bestowed on pursuits of little or no use, alluding, probably, to alchemy, the professed magic arts, astrology, etc.; since, if but a small portion of this labor should come to be bestowed in a proper manner, and on proper objects, great things might be expected to result: especially would such extensive and laborious histories of the facts and operations of nature as he recommended be the source of expectation. "A great and royal work truly this," he says, "and of much labor and expense." As a further ground to suppose that human knowledge might be improved and increased to an extent of which some were inclined to despair, Lord Bacon introduces his own example, "not," he modestly says, "by way of ostentation, but because it may be useful." He argues, that if he himself—a man as much employed in civil affairs as any other of the age in which he lived, for he was Lord Chancellor of England at the time his Novum Organum was published;-if he, a man of but infirm health, has had the honor to lead the way unassisted by any coadjutor, in the new and untrodden path which he here attempts to point cut to posterity; what may not be expected from men of leisure; from a union of labors; from a proper division of them, and from opportunities afforded by the succession of ages? He concludes his remarks on the grounds on which is founded the hope of advancing the sciences, by intimating that even were this expectation much less than he rightly deemed it to be, or, to use his own language, "although a much weaker and fainter breeze of hope should breathe from this new continent," or world of science, which he is endeavoring to point out; yet it would be worth men's while, at all events, to make efforts to explore nature by the light of this new method: there was, at least, a chance of success resulting from their labor; whercas, to sit down in despondency, and to decline all enlightened exertions, could lead to nothing but ignorance and error, and was unworthy of the dignity of the human mind VII. Further Remarks preparatory to the Inductive 66 Method. The last or seventh section into which this former part of the Novum Organum may be divided, is designed to give some further idea of the new method here proposed of interpreting nature. This, however, is done rather by way of guarding the reader against erroneous expectations than by developing the method itself, which he reserves for the second part. Having now levelled and polished the mirror," says our author, in his figurative and expressive diction," it remains that we set it in a right position, or, as it were, with a benevolent aspect towards the things we shall further propose. For to a new undertaking, not only a prepossession in favor of a rooted opinion is prejudicial, but a false notion and imagination of what is proposed to be done is equally so. We must, therefore, endeavor to convey a just and true idea of what we intend." In order to prevent misapprehension, he again cautions his readers, as he had done at the outset of his work, against supposing that he aspired to be the founder of a new sect in philosophy, after the manner of the ancient Greeks. It was his aim, and it was an aim worthy of such a master-spirit, not to reign over men's opinions, but to conduct them into the temple of truth, from whose inmost sanctuaries they might obtain such a panoply as would enable them to extend the boundaries of man's power over mature, not in the noisy triumphs of a scholastic warfare, but in glorious victories over ignorance, prejudice, and error. Though he thus disclaims the idea of attempting to found a new sect, it must be allowed that he possesses that honor in the highest sense; for if we were, in the most general manner, to designate the philosophers of modern times, in contradistinction to the Aristotelians and Platonists of an earlier period, we should call them Baco nians: Bacon may himself very justly be accounted the father of the modern philosophy. He, however, contents himself here with aspiring, as he says, "only to sow the seeds of pure truth for posterity, and not to be wanting in his assistance to the first beginning of great undertakings." Lord Bacon wishes his readers, in perusing his work, not to be prejudiced against the method he recommends, nor disappointed on finding that he has not made any very striking discoveries, which, indeed, he does not profess to have done; his design, in fact, being obviously of a more general nature. For though in the Novum Organum, and in his other works, indications and outlines of discovery are to be found, yet he considered that, up to his time, there was no sufficient collection of facts and appearances, to enable any one to enter with advantage on the genuine interpretation of nature. Still he did not wish to discourage any from employing their sagacity in attempting to make discoveries on the foundation of what was already known, or from making use of his own tables and outlines of a history of nature, to this end; but his own great object, he repeats, was to prepare the way for future improvements, and not to neglect this his main design, for the sake of hasty and unseasonable diversions, like "Atalanta" in the fable, who lost the race by stopping to pick up the golden apple. "For we do not childishly affect golden fruit, but place every thing in the victory of art over nature." He next cautions the reader against the effect which may be produced on his mind from meeting with some experiments in the history of nature, and tables of invention, which seem not well verified, or which may even be absolutely false. Such errors are to be expected to creep in at the dawn of the day of Science, and Lord Bacon was certainly by no means free from them. It must not, on account of a few such oversights, be suspected that the inventions he would point out are grounded on doubtful principles and erroneous foundations; and he argues that if any should be disgusted with some particular mistakes in his account of facts in nature, what must be thought of the remiss and negligent method that had hitherto been employed, and what of the philosophy and of the sciences that were built upon such "quicksands?" Nor are men to turn away from the inductive method, or from the experiments it demands, as if in some cases it dwelt too much on what might seem minute, or trite and vulgar; since great mischief has arisen from many things having been spoken of as known and ascertained, of which, in fact, little was understood. Thus, in the philosophy that was prevalent, gravity, the celestial motions, heat, cold, hardness, fluidity, density, animation, similarity, organization, were all the subjects of dogmatic assertion, while little that was satisfactory was said respecting them. Men, however, must condescend to attend to the commonest things if they would acquire knowledge, and to things displeasing to the senses. The design here is "not," he says, to build a capital or erect a pyramid to the glory of man, but to found the temple of the universe in the human intellect." None are to suppose, what the vulgar are too ready to imagine, as well as all who were devoted to the existing philosophy, that the minutia here laid down are tedious and subtile; they ought rather to consider that, for a time, efforts should be made to increase the materials of knowledge, to kindle the light by which nature may be examined, and that a too great impatience for immediate advan tage should be checked. If any one should be inclined to disregard the cautions, principles and axioms laid down in the method of induction, as needless subtilties, what would he say to the schoolmen, who are full of subtilties, "without end as without fruit ?" As an apology for what to many would appear a bold and daring attempt-that of rejecting all the sciences, and all the ancient masters in philosophy as with one stroke, without admitting the authority of any one single renowned name of antiquity, and trusting only to his own unaided strength-the author remarks that, were he disposed to act insincerely, it would not be difficult to persuade men that what he here attempts is but a revival of the most ancient method of science, before nature was pompously ushered in with the "flutes and trumpets of the Greeks;" and, well acquainted as Lord Bacon was with the mythology of the ancients, it would have been easier, perhaps, for him. to have gained over the admirers of antiquity by this expedient, than to render palatable a system which presented no gaudy and alluring theories, and which came out entirely as a modern innovation. But with that astonishing degree of freedom from the shackles of prejudice, considering the time in which he lived, and that devotedness to natural truth for its own sake, which was so characteristic of this great philosopher, he disdains all such "stratagem and imposture," and relies exclusively on the evidence of things themselves. It is his object to place before the mind, not the mock models of the world which others had framed, of which the theories of Aristotle, Plato, and Epicurus, are specimens, but to present the world's true model as it exists in nature—to trace before the eyes of men the exact lines of truth. Another objection, which it is supposed may be alleged, is, that, notwithstanding all the labor here employed to impress on mankind this new method of studying the sciences, it will probably do no more than land us at length in some one of those systems of philosophy which prevailed among the ancients that they, in the beginning of their investigations, procured a large stock of observations and experiments, and digested them into books and tables, as is here recommended, and from these sources extracted the matter of their theories; but thinking it needless to publish their notes and minute observations, those materials of their labors are now lost to us, as architects, after a building is finished, take down the scaffolding and framework, and remove them out of sight. To this it is answered, that though it is difficult to suppose the ancients completed their works without some such collection of materials, yet, at all events, it is certain, from their writings, that their method of philosophizing was no other than flying hastily from some particular examples to general conclusions; and if any new examples occurred, bearing an aspect hostile to their favorite ideas, they either contrived to make them seem |