sunt axiomata illa vera et solida et viva, in quibus humanæ res et fortunæ sitæ sunt, et suprà hæc quoque, tandem ipsa illa generalissi. ma, talia scilicet quæ non abstracta sint, sed per hæc media verè limitantur." The vice of the older philosophy was the passing from one of the extremes of this chain, abruptly, and "per saltum," to the other.

As we have already mentioned, Bacon has never preferred any claim to the character of a scientific discoverer; his mission was a more exalted and a vaster one: the object of his works was to "note the deficiency" in the various species of knowledge composing the philosophical systems of the world; to distinguish with accuracy which among the various lines taken by investigation were capable of leading to certain, useful, and productive results; then to establish the method to be pursued in following those preferable lines when once ascertained; and finally to give examples or specimens of his own method applied and put in action.

In contemplating this gigantic scheme, it is impossible to admire sufficiently the genius which has traced with prophetic accuracy the paths of sciences which were not then in existence; the union of good sense and enthusiasm in that mind, which, while limiting in one direction the advance of human knowledge, encouraged us to push on, in another, to a development so remote as to be even yet undefined; or the rich and masculine eloquence in which these sublime thoughts are communicated.

The great project which has immortalised the "Lord Chancellor of human nature" was conceived at a very early age. "Such noble ideas are most congenial to the sanguine spirit of youth," as Hallam justly remarks, "and to its ignorance of the extent of labour it undertakes." Bacon himself mentions, as one of his earliest productions, a work bearing the somewhat ambitious title 'Temporis Partus Maximus,' which is now lost to us, but which probably contained the germ or embryo of his system. We will now give a short account of his great productions, in the hope of thus rendering his philosophy more intelligible in its unity to our readers-a precaution which has been too much neglected by those who have written on the subject, and who have treated Bacon's works rather as separate and independent treatises, than as parts of one vast edifice or creation.

In 1597 appeared the first edition of his Essays, a little work on miscellaneous subjects, which contains perhaps more of wisdom, novelty, and profound remark than any book of equal size that was ever composed. The subjects of these short treatises are often of a most trite and ordinary kind, but yet it is impossible to read them, even for the fiftieth time, without being struck by some new and original remark, or seeing some thought placed in a new and origina. light. "The Essays," says Stewart, "are the best known and most popular of all his works. It is one of those where the superiority of his genius appears to the greatest advantage; the novelty and

depth of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from the triteness of the subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few hours; and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in it something unobserved before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties."

The best way which we can follow to give a clear idea of Bacon's gigantic plan for the restoration of philosophy will be to present our readers with a sort of programme of the whole system of works in which he develops the various parts of his project; and this, arranged in a tabular form, will, we think, avoid the danger so very natural for persons to fall into with respect to the details of Bacon's great intellectual temple. That so vast a design could ever have been projected by a single person is more wonderful than that some parts of the work were never executed. We have, however, enough to prove with what justice the learned men of all countries have united, during a period of nearly two centuries and a half, in considering Bacon as the father of experimental philosophy. Having given this conspectus or synopsis, we shall proceed to examine more in detail the various works composing the great Verulamian Cycle, and thus we hope to unite the advantages of brevity and distinctness. shall see that, as these works appeared successively, though each forming, as it were, one stone of the Baconian edifice, there were necessarily to be expected many repetitions of ideas previously enounced, and many anticipations of future arguments. Our synoptical arrangement will be as follows:

VI. *Philosophia Secunda.

We

i. De Prærogativis Instantairum. ii. *Adminicula Inductionis. iii. *Rectificatio Inductionis. iv. *Variatio Inquisitionis pro naturâ subjecti.

v. *De Prærogativis Naturarum quâ. tenus ad Inquisit.

vi. *De Terminis Inquisitionis. vii. *Deductio ad Praxin.

viii. *De Paracevis ad Inquisitionem. ix. *De Scala Axiomatum.

[The articles marked with an asterisk were never executed.]

We will now make a few remarks on the nature and subjects of the above works, which together form the whole system of the Baconian philosophy. The author, before commencing the construction of his edifice, begins by what may be called clearing the ground on which it is to stand. The treatise 'De Augmentis' is mainly a Latin version of an English book 'On the Proficience and Advancement of Learning,' which had appeared in 1605. It contains the outline of the whole system, and points out the defects perceptible in the methods previously employed in the investigation of truth. It would however be a great mistake to consider the 'De Augmentis' as a mere translation of the treatise just alluded to; it is in many respects almost a new work; not more than two-thirds of the whole being translated, while the remaining third contains the result of fresh speculations. Much, however, as the 'De Augmentis' is superior to its English predecessor, Bacon did not intend it, at least in the form under which we have it, to form the first treatise of the 'Instauratio.' That place was to be occupied by a book, 'De Partitionibus Scientiæ,' intended to exhibit the actual state of human knowledge when he wrote, and to show its deficiencies. This general summary of human science must therefore be considered, though not as altogether wanting in the 'Instauratio,' yet as but very imperfectly supplied by the treatise 'De Augmentis.'

The second part was to discuss, as he himself expresses it, "the science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of things, and of the true aids of the understanding;" this being the new logic, the inductive method, in which what is eminently called the Baconian philosophy conists. This is very well expressed in the title which the author has given to his work, "Organum" signifying literally "instrument." The treatise which we possess

under the title of Novum Organum' is rather collection of materials for the work than the book itself, as Bacon intended it to stand second in his list. He calls it 'Partis Secundæ Summa, digesta in Aphorismos;' and it contains the heads or propositions of the projected work. It is subdivided into nine distinct portions, of which Bacon has given us the titles and the general object, though only the first of these subdivisions contains any development of the idea. The first of these treated of what in his picturesque language he calls "prerogative instances," that is, of what phenomena are to be selected for investigation, as most likely to conduce, by the speculations to which they give rise, to the advantage of the human species. This singular term "prærogative," is not used in the ordinary English sense of the same word, but contains an allusion to the "prærogativa centuria" of the Roman people, i. e. the first tribes whose votes were taken at the elections of the Comitia, and whose decision was supposed to influence the suffrages of the rest of the citizens. Of these instances fifteen are used to guide the intellect,

five to assist the senses, and seven to correct the practice. And here we may remark a striking instance of Bacon's wonderful mind. In all former theories of logic we had been taught to detect and guard against certain fallacies or false reasonings, arising from a wrong employment of words or a vicious arrangement of the various parts of an argument. Bacon goes farther than this, and has tracked, so to say, these fallacies to their true origin-not in the abuse or imperfections of language, but to the innate weaknesses of the human mind itself. The former dialecticians, like inexperienced physicians, contented themselves with applying local or topical remedies to the external and merely symptomatic efflorescence of the disease, while Bacon, gifted with a larger spirit and a deeper insight into nature, attacks the evil in its internal and invisible source, not cleansing the surface only, but purifying the blood. He has classed the general causes of logical error under four heads, in a passage universally quoted for its brilliancy and truth. These errors of reasoning he calls idola, a term often rather absurdly rendered in English by the word "idols," but which would be much more correctly represented by the expression "images," or, as Bacon himself phrases it, "false appearances"-phantoms of the mind, in short. These are idola Tribûs, idola Specûs, idola Fori, and idola Theatri; against all of which it behoves us to be upon our guard. By fallacies of the Tribe, Bacon indicates the natural weaknesses to which every human being is liable; those of the Den or Cavern are the errors into which we are betrayed by peculiar dispositions and circumstances; the fallacies of the Market-place are those false conclusions arising from the popular and current use of words which represent things otherwise than as they really are; and the idola of the Theatre, the errors proceeding from false systems of philosophy and incorrect reasoning. It will be seen, from this as well as from a thousand other instances, how high is the ground on which Bacon philosophises, not merely attempting, as all before him had done, to regulate and correct the expression of reason, but aspiring to purify the very atmosphere of thought itself. To proceed with our analysis of the 'Novum Organum,' the second subdivision treats of the aids to induction; the third, of the correction of induction; the fourth, of varying the investigation according to the nature of the subject; fifthly, of prerogative natures. e. what objects shall be first inquired into; sixthly, of the boundaries of inquiry; seventhly, on the application of inquiry to practice, and what relates to man, eighthly, on the preparations (paraskeuis) for inquiry; and lastly, on the ascending and descending scale of axioms.

The third division of the 'Instauratio' was to contain a complete system of Natural History; not however of that science to which the name of Natural History is at present confined, but Bacon implies in that term an inquiry into the properties of all physica.

bodies, and a faithful and accurate register of all the phenomena that have ever been observed in man's dealing with natural substances. In the title given to this part of the work, 'Sylva Sylvarum,' Bacon probably used the word sylva in the sense which the ancient philosophers of the Epicurean school attached to it—a sense originating in the similar signification assigned to its Greek radical, that is, primary matter, capable of being modified by a plastic force. It would be absurd to suppose that the outline here sketched in by Bacon could be filled up by any single hand, during any single life, in any age of mankind. He had previously published as a separate work his Centuries of Natural History,' containing about a thousand miscellaneous facts and experiments: and he has given a hundred and thirty particular histories which ought to be drawn up for this great work. A few of these he has given in a sort of skeleton, as samples rather of the method of collecting the facts than of the facts themselves; namely, the History of the Winds, of Life and Death, of Density and Rarity, of Sound and Hearing.

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The fourth part, called 'Scala Intellectûs,' is also wanting, with the exception of a few introductory pages. "By these tables,' says Bacon, we mean not such examples as we subjoin to the several rules of our method, but types and models, which place before our eyes the entire process of the mind in the discovery of truth; selecting various and remarkable instances.”

We now come to the fifth part of the 'Instauratio,' in which Bacon had designed to give a specimen of the new philosophy which he hoped to raise after a due use of his natural history and inductive method, by way of anticipation or sample of the whole. He calls it 'Prodromi sive Anticipationes Philosophiæ Secundæ ;' and though the work does not exist as he projected it, we possess various fragments of this part under the titles of Cogitationes de Naturâ Rerum,' Cogitata et Visa,' 'Filum Labyrinthi,' and a few more; being probably all that he had reduced to writing. The last portion of Bacon's colossal plan was to be a perfect system of philosophy, deduced by a legitimate, sober, and exact inquiry according to the method whose principles he had established. This consummation, however, of his new system Bacon well knew was beyond his own mighty powers to execute; indeed he expresses his conviction that it was altogether beyond the sphere of human thought. "To perfect this last part is above our powers and beyond our hopes. We may, as we trust, make no despicable beginnings; the destinies of the human race must complete it-in such a manner perhaps, as men, looking only at the present, would not readily conceive. For upon this will depend, not only a speculative good, but all the fortunes of mankind, and all their power.' "And with an eloquent prayer," continues Hallam, from whose excellent view of the Baconian philosophy the foregoing remarks are condensed "with an eloquent