ding to the states where they live, what is received law, not what ought to be law. There are in nature certain fountains of justice whence all civil laws are derived but as streams." Divine Learning "rests upon the word and oracle of God: " but great latitude is practised as regards the use of reason in religion. It is a defect in Divine Learning that it has not sufficiently inquired into the true limits and use of reason in religious matters. Reason has two uses in religion: (1) the "conceiving and apprehending of the mysteries of God revealed to us," and (2) the "inferring and deriving of doctrine and direction therefrom." There are two principal parts of Divinity: the matter or information revealed, and the nature of the revelation. Perfection or completeness in Divinity is not to be sought. The Scriptures require to be treated according to a method not applicable to any other written work. - 2. The New Method of the Interpretation of Nature. Introduction. The New Method, or Organon, is by Bacon distinguished from the Old, the traditional logic having its source remotely in the Organon of Aristotle as regards "end," "order of demonstration," and "starting-point of inquiry." As to end, the New Method aims ultimately at the invention of arts, not, like the Old, at the invention of mere arguments. As to "order of demonstration," the New Method entirely rejects the syllogism, because of the uncertainty of mere words, and of the fact that the primary notions which must form the content of the terms of the propositions constituting syllogisms are as yet vague and false from overhastiness of induction; and it proceeds regularly and gradually from one axiom to another, so that the most general are now reached only last. As to starting-point, the New Method begins with careful observation and induction, treating the received first notions and the immediate reports of the senses as inadequate and false. The Old Method was a method of "anticipation" or of applying preconceived notions to the judgment of nature: the New Method is a method of interpreting nature. Nor is the New Method sceptical, any more than dogmatic; it does not assert or imply that nothing can be known, but rather the contrary. In the treatise on the New Method, viz., the "Novum Organum," Bacon devotes one book, the first, (chiefly) to pointing out and explaining the idola of human knowledge, and a second to explaining the method itself. Man is the "ser The Idola of Human Knowledge. vant and interpreter of nature : " he can do and understand only so much as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. The unaided intellect, like the unaided hand, cannot effect much. To penetrate into the recesses of nature, we require a fixed and sure method. The mind must be led to particulars and their series and order, and must lay aside its preconceived, false notions and become familiar with facts. There are four sorts of false notions besetting men's minds, which must be known, either to the end that they be eradicated, or, if that be not possible, be not allowed to warp the mind in its search for truth. First, the human understanding has false notions because it is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than there really is having once formed an opinion, it seeks to support it by all possible means; it is deeply impressed by that which suddenly strikes the imagination; it is restless; it is not a "dry light," but is clouded by the influence of the will and feelings; it is deceived by the dulness and ineptness of the senses; it is prone to abstraction, and to give substance and reality to things transitory. These false notions are, by name, Idola Tribus ("idola of the tribe or race "). Another class of false notions are those besetting individual minds as such, - Idola Specus ("idola of the cave"). They are such as result from the circumstances that particular men become attached to certain particular sciences or speculations, to the neglect of others, that some minds are more apt to mark differences, others the likenesses of things, some are given to the admiration A The destruction of antiquity, others to an extreme "love and appetite for novelty," etc. A third class the most important — of idola, Idola Fori ("idola of the market-place "), are such as are due to the "alliance of words and names." fourth class, Idola Theatri ("idola of the theatre "), includes the false notions caused by the (uncritical) reception of (ancient) systems of philosophy. and avoidance of idola, though of very great importance, is but a negative and preliminary work in the advancement of human knowledge. The chief hope for that advancement lies in induction by means of contradictory instances (and this is as true in Ethics and Politics as in Physics). Hypothesis also may be of use, if cautiously employed. The Positive Side of the Interpretation of Nature. - The (positive) interpretation of nature has two parts: 1, the eduction of axioms or forms from experience; and, 2, the derivation of new experiments from forms. There is, first of all, required for the discovery of forms: (1) a "muster or presentation before the understanding of all known instances which agree in the same nature (selected for investigation), though in substances the most unlike;" i.e., what may be termed (is so termed by Bacon) a Table of Essence and Presence; (2) a "presentation to the understanding of instances in which the given nature is wanting (for the form ought no less to be absent when the given nature is absent, than present when it is present), and since to note all these would be endless, also the subjoining to the affirmatives of the negatives, and the inquiring as to the absence of the given nature only in those subjects which are most akin to the others in which it is present and forthcoming," Table of Deviation or Absence in Proximity; (3) a "presentation to the understanding of instances in which the nature under inquiry is found in different degrees, more or less, which must be done by making a comparison either of its increase or decrease in the same subject, or its amount in different - subjects, as compared with one another," Table of Degrees, or Table of Comparison. It is next necessary, in order to discover the "form" of a given nature, or the nature which always occurs with it as its cause, to exclude from investigation all natures not always found in conjunction with the given nature, or not found to increase or decrease when the nature increases or decreases. This process of exclusion is the foundation, but not the real beginning, of it in an affirmative sense; which is made only by a survey of all instances remaining after the process of exclusion. The result of this survey may be called the First Vintage. It is always of a somewhat tentative character, and requires to be supplemented by certain “helps of the understanding in the interpretation of nature and true and perfect induction." These helps of the understanding (only the first of which was ever fully explained, owing to the fragmentary character of the treatise on the Interpretation of Nature) are as follows: (1) prerogative instances (i. e., instances of first importance); (2) supports of induction; (3) rectification of induction; (4) varying of the investigation according to the nature of the subject; (5) prerogative natures with respect to investigation (or what should be inquired of first and what last); (6) limits of investigation, or a synopsis of all natures in the universe; (7) application to practice, or things in their relation to man; (8) preparations for investigation; (9) ascending and descending scale of axioms. The prerogative instances twenty-seven in all are distinguished among themselves by their different values in relation to the "speculative" or the "operative" phases of induction, to the activities of sense and of understanding, etc. Certain instances, five in number, the "Instances of the Lamp" (the use of a fanciful terminology is characteristic of Bacon), have their significance in the fact that they assist the senses. Others, "by facilitating the processes of exclusion, by narrowing and indicating more nearly the affirmative of the form, or by exalting the understanding For and leading it to genera and common natures, etc., assist the understanding. Of Bacon's twenty-seven prerogative instances, it must suffice to notice in particular only one, - the Crucial Instance, or " Instance of the Finger-post," which, according to Professor Fowler, is "by far the most celebrated of all": "When in the investigation of any nature the understanding is so balanced as to be uncertain to which of two or more natures the cause of the nature in question should be assigned, on account of the frequent and ordinary concurrence of many natures, Instances of the Finger-post are such as show the union of one of the natures with the nature in question to be sure and indissoluble, of the other to be varied and separable. example, if it be found in any history worthy of credit that there has been any comet, whether high or low, which has not revolved in manifest agreement (however irregular) with the diurnal motion, but has revolved in the opposite direction, then certainly we may set down thus much as established that there may be in nature some such motion. But if nothing of the kind can be found, it must be regarded as questionable, and recourse had to other Instances of the Finger-post about it." Following are the mere names of a number of the instances: Solitary Instances, Migratory Instances, Striking Instances, Clandestine Instances, Instances of Range or Limitation. (It should here be said that it is not always easy to separate the instances clearly one from another, and in fact there appears to be considerable overlapping among them.) Natural and Experimental History.2-Bacon's chief performance in the gathering of data for the new science is a collection consisting of one thousand "experiments," grouped, in no very systematic fashion, into ten equal divisions (termed "centuries"). "centuries"). One group relates to "percolation," another to the subject of musical phenomena 1 See note on this topic in his edition of the "Novum Organum;" also "Bacon " in "English Philosophers" series. 2 See Nichol's Bacon (" Blackwood's Philosophical Classics "). |