quote from one of Mr. Ellis's contributions to the great work of Bacon's most learned, competent, and impartial biographer, Mr. Spedding.

Few of Harvey's sayings are recorded, but Aubrey tells us that some one having enlarged upon the merits of the Baconian philosophy in his presence, 'Yes,' said Harvey, 'he writes philosophy like a Chancellor.' On which pithy | reply diverse persons will put diverse interpretations. The illumination of experience may possibly tempt a modern follower of Harvey to expound the dark saying thus: So this servile courtier, this intriguing politician, this unscrupulous lawyer, this witty master of phrases, proposes to teach me my business in the intervals of his. I have borne with Riolan, let me also be patient with him'; at any rate, I have no better reading to offer.

In the latter half of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, the future of physical science was safe enough in the hands of Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey, Descartes, and the noble army of investigators who flocked to their standard, and followed up the advance of their leaders. I do not believe that their wonderfully rapid progress would have been one whit retarded if the Novum Organon had never seen the light; while, if Harvey's little Exercise had been lost, physiology would have stood still until another Harvey was born into the world.

(Brewster, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton 2. 404-406.)

The process of Lord Bacon was, we believe, never tried by any philosopher but himself. As the subject of its application, he selected that of heat. With his usual erudition, he collected all the facts which science could supply; he arranged them in tables; he cross-questioned them with all the subtlety of a pleader; he combined them with all the sagacity of a judge; and he conjured them by all the magic of his exclusive processes. But, after all

this display of physical logic, nature thus interrogated was still silent. The oracle which he had himself established refused to give its responses, and the ministering priest was driven with discomfiture from his shrine. This example, in short, of the application of his system, will remain to future ages as a memorable instance of the absurdity of attempting to fetter discovery by any artificial rules.

Nothing even in mathematical science can be more certain than that a collection of scientific facts are of themselves incapable of leading to discovery, or to the determination of general laws, unless they contain the predominating fact or relation in which the discovery mainly resides. A vertical column of arch-stones possesses more strength than the materials arranged in an arch without the keystone. However nicely they are adjusted, and however nobly the arch may spring, it never can possess either equilibrium or stability. In this comparison all the facts are supposed to be necessary to the final result; but, in the inductive method, it is impossible to ascertain the relative importance of any facts, or even to determine if the facts have any value at all, till the master-fact which constitutes the discovery has crowned the zealous efforts of the aspiring philosopher. The mind then returns to the dark and barren waste over which it has been hovering; and by the guidance of this single torch it embraces, under the comprehensive grasp of general principles, the multifarious and insulated phenomena which had formerly neither value nor connexion. Hence it must be obvious to the most superficial thinker that discovery consists in the detection of some concealed relation — some deep-seated affinity which baffles ordinary research, or in the discovery of some simple fact which is connected by slender ramifications with the subject to be investigated; but which, when once detected, carries us

back by its divergence to all the phenomena which it embraces and explains.

In order to give additional support to these views, it would be interesting to ascertain the general character of the process by which a mind of acknowledged power actually proceeds in the path of successful inquiry. The history of science does not furnish us with much information on this head, and if it is to be found at all, it must be gleaned from the biographies of eminent men. Whatever this process may be in its details, if it has any, there cannot be the slightest doubt that in its generalities at least it is the very reverse of the method of induction. The impatience of genius spurns the restraints of mechanical rules, and never will submit to the plodding drudgery of inductive discipline. The discovery of a new fact unfits even a patient mind for deliberate inquiry. Conscious of having added to science what had escaped the sagacity of former ages, the ambitious discoverer invests his new acquisition with an importance which does not belong to it. He imagines a thousand consequences to flow from his discovery; he forms innumerable theories to explain it; and he exhausts his fancy in trying all its possible relations to recognized difficulties and unexplained facts. The reins, however, thus freely given to his imagination, are speedily drawn up. His wildest conceptions are all subjected to the rigid test of experiment, and he has thus been hurried by the excursions of his own fancy into new and fertile paths, far removed from ordinary observation. Here the peculiar character of his own genius displays itself by the invention of methods of trying his own speculations, and he is thus often led to new discoveries far more important and general than that by which he began his inquiry. For a confirmation of these views, we may refer to the History of Kepler's Discoveries; and if we do not recognize them to the same extent in the labors

of Newton, it is because he kept back his discoveries till they were nearly perfected, and therefore withheld the successive steps of his inquiries.

(ABBOTT, Francis Bacon, pp. 333-339.)

Although Bacon always speaks of his own philosophy as quite new and different from all philosophic systems that had gone before, yet he was at least partially aware that, on its negative side, and in its protest against excessive deference to the authority of Aristotle, his work had been anticipated. He had entered into the fruits of the labors of many predecessors, some of whom are mentioned in his pages; and without a brief review of their work, it would be difficult to realize the nature of the task he undertook.

As early as the thirteenth century his namesake, Roger Bacon (born about 1214), had protested against the Aristotelian despotism, in behalf of a new learning which should be based on experience and should produce fruit. In language which reminds us of Francis Bacon's Idols, he imputes human ignorance to four causes: authority, custom, popular opinion, and the pride of supposed knowledge. Nor could the author of the Novum Organum have uttered a more confident prediction of the results to be expected from the practical application of the New Learning than is found in the passage where Roger Bacon declares that, as Aristotle by ways of wisdom gave Alexander the kingdom of the world, so Science can enable the Church to triumph over Antichrist by disclosing the secrets of nature and art.

But the Schoolmen were too strong for Roger Bacon. Beginning with John Scotus Erigena in the ninth century, and ending with William of Ockham in the fourteenth, these philosophers made it their endeavor to arrange and support the orthodox doctrine of the Church in accordance

with the rules and methods of the Aristotelian dialectics; and at the very time when Roger Bacon was rebelling against the yoke, Thomas Aquinas was riveting it more firmly than ever by fashioning the tenets of Aristotle into that fixed form in which they became the great impediments to the progress of knowledge. The adoption of the Aristotelian philosophy by the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in the form in which Aquinas had systematized it, helped to defer for three centuries the reform which Roger Bacon was already urging as a crying necessity. Pasturing, and content to pasture, on Aristotle instead of Nature, the Schoolmen despised experiment and observation. It was such students as these whom Francis Bacon likened, not to the bees, who mold what they gather, nor even to the ants, who at least collect, but to the spiders, evolving unsubstantial theory from self-extracted argument.

Yet during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries theoretical innovation and practical reform were in secret mutiny, preparing the way for the open revolt against Aristotle and his viceroy of Aquinum. During these two centuries the fundamental doctrines of mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, magnetism, and chemistry were established and promulgated; and their startling and irrefutable results. forced on men's minds the power given to mankind over nature by the New Philosophy. Over these fresh provinces of learning, since Aristotle had not discovered them, Aristotle could claim no dominion. In this revolution the principal part was played by a class described by Whewell as the 'Practical Reformers'; but to Francis Bacon they were comparatively unknown and unappreciated, and we will therefore give precedence to that other class which receives more frequent and prominent mention in his works, and which may be called the class of Theoretical Innovators.'