These hypotheses cannot yet be said to be even probable, but at least
they are so modified as to include some of the preceding laws which
are firmly established, whereas Bacon’s “form,” or true definition of
heat, as stated in the text, includes no laws of phenomena, explains no
process, and is indeed itself an example of illicit generalization.
they are so modified as to include some of the preceding laws which
are firmly established, whereas Bacon’s “form,” or true definition of
heat, as stated in the text, includes no laws of phenomena, explains no
process, and is indeed itself an example of illicit generalization.
Bacon
On the other hand, there is a like correspondence between
mercury, water, aqueous vapor, air, and, perhaps, pure inter-sidereal
ether. Yet do these two quaternions, or great natural tribes (each
within its own limits), differ immensely in quantity and density of
substance, while they generally agree in conformation, as is manifest
in many instances. On the other hand, the metals agree in such quantity
and density (especially when compared with vegetables, etc. ), but
differ in many respects in conformation. Animals and vegetables, in
like manner, vary in their almost infinite modes of conformation, but
range within very limited degrees of quantity and density of substance.
The next most general correspondence is that between individual bodies
and those which supply them by way of menstruum or support. Inquiry,
therefore, must be made as to the climate, soil, and depth at which
each metal is generated, and the same of gems, whether produced in
rocks or mines, also as to the soil in which particular trees, shrubs,
and herbs, mostly grow and, as it were, delight; and as to the best
species of manure, whether dung, chalk, sea sand, or ashes, etc. , and
their different propriety and advantage according to the variety of
soils. So also the grafting and setting of trees and plants (as regards
the readiness of grafting one particular species on another) depends
very much upon harmony, and it would be amusing to try an experiment
I have lately heard of, in grafting forest trees (garden trees alone
having hitherto been adopted), by which means the leaves and fruit
are enlarged, and the trees produce more shade. The specific food of
animals again should be observed, as well as that which cannot be used.
Thus the carnivorous cannot be fed on herbs, for which reason the order
of feuilletans, the experiment having been made, has nearly vanished;
human nature being incapable of supporting their regimen, although the
human will has more power over the bodily frame than that of other
animals. The different kinds of putrefaction from which animals are
generated should be noted.
The harmony of principal bodies with those subordinate to them (such
indeed may be deemed those we have alluded to above) are sufficiently
manifest, to which may be added those that exist between different
bodies and their objects, and, since these latter are more apparent,
they may throw great light when well observed and diligently examined
upon those which are more latent.
The more internal harmony and aversion, or friendship and enmity
(for superstition and folly have rendered the terms of sympathy and
antipathy almost disgusting), have been either falsely assigned,
or mixed with fable, or most rarely discovered from neglect. For if
one were to allege that there is an enmity between the vine and the
cabbage, because they will not come up well when sown together, there
is a sufficient reason for it in the succulent and absorbent nature
of each plant, so that the one defrauds the other. Again, if one were
to say that there is a harmony and friendship between the corn and
the corn-flower, or the wild poppy, because the latter seldom grow
anywhere but in cultivated soils, he ought rather to say, there is an
enmity between them, for the poppy and the corn-flower are produced and
created by those juices which the corn has left and rejected, so that
the sowing of the corn prepares the ground for their production. And
there are a vast number of similar false assertions. As for fables,
they must be totally exterminated. There remains, then, but a scanty
supply of such species of harmony as has borne the test of experiment,
such as that between the magnet and iron, gold and quicksilver, and
the like. In chemical experiments on metals, however, there are some
others worthy of notice, but the greatest abundance (where the whole
are so few in numbers) is discovered in certain medicines, which,
from their occult and specific qualities (as they are termed), affect
particular limbs, humors, diseases, or constitutions. Nor should we
omit the harmony between the motion and phenomena of the moon, and
their effects on lower bodies, which may be brought together by an
accurate and honest selection from the experiments of agriculture,
navigation, and medicine, or of other sciences. By as much as these
general instances, however, of more latent harmony, are rare, with
so much the more diligence are they to be inquired after, through
tradition, and faithful and honest reports, but without rashness
and credulity, with an anxious and, as it were, hesitating degree of
reliance. There remains one species of harmony which, though simple in
its mode of action, is yet most valuable in its use, and must by no
means be omitted, but rather diligently investigated. It is the ready
or difficult coition or union of bodies in composition, or simple
juxtaposition. For some bodies readily and willingly mix, and are
incorporated, others tardily and perversely; thus powders mix best with
water, chalk and ashes with oils, and the like. Nor are these instances
of readiness and aversion to mixture to be alone collected, but others,
also, of the collocation, distribution, and digestion of the parts when
mingled, and the predominance after the mixture is complete.
7. Lastly, there remains the seventh, and last of the seven, modes
of action; namely, that by the alternation and interchange of the
other six; but of this, it will not be the right time to offer any
examples, until some deeper investigation shall have taken place of
each of the others. The series, or chain of this alternation, in its
mode of application to separate effects, is no less powerful in its
operation than difficult to be traced. But men are possessed with the
most extreme impatience, both of such inquiries, and their practical
application, although it be the clew of the labyrinth in all greater
works. Thus far of the generally useful instances.
LI. The twenty-seventh and last place we will assign to the magical
instances, a term which we apply to those where the matter or efficient
agent is scanty or small, in comparison with the grandeur of the work
or effect produced; so that even when common they appear miraculous,
some at first sight, others even upon more attentive observation.
Nature, however, of herself, supplies these but sparingly. What she
will do when her whole store is thrown open, and after the discovery
of forms, processes, and conformation, will appear hereafter. As far
as we can yet conjecture, these magic effects are produced in three
ways, either by self-multiplication, as in fire, and the poisons termed
specific, and the motions transferred and multiplied from wheel to
wheel; or by the excitement, or, as it were, invitation of another
substance, as in the magnet, which excites innumerable needles without
losing or diminishing its power; and again in leaven, and the like; or
by the excess of rapidity of one species of motion over another, as
has been observed in the case of gunpowder, cannon, and mines. The two
former require an investigation of harmonies, the latter of a measure
of motion. Whether there be any mode of changing bodies _per minima_
(as it is termed), and transferring the delicate conformations of
matter, which is of importance in all transformations of bodies, so as
to enable art to effect, in a short time, that which nature works out
by divers expedients, is a point of which we have as yet no indication.
But, as we aspire to the extremest and highest results in that which is
solid and true, so do we ever detest, and, as far as in us lies, expel
all that is empty and vain.
LII. Let this suffice as to the respective dignity of prerogatives of
instances. But it must be noted, that in this our organ, we treat of
logic, and not of philosophy. Seeing, however, that our logic instructs
and informs the understanding, in order that it may not, with the small
hooks, as it were, of the mind, catch at, and grasp mere abstractions,
but rather actually penetrate nature, and discover the properties and
effects of bodies, and the determinate laws of their substance (so
that this science of ours springs from the nature of things, as well as
from that of the mind); it is not to be wondered at, if it have been
continually interspersed and illustrated with natural observations and
experiments, as instances of our method. The prerogative instances are,
as appears from what has preceded, twenty-seven in number, and are
termed, solitary instances, migrating instances, conspicuous instances,
clandestine instances, constitutive instances, similar instances,
singular instances, deviating instances, bordering instances,
instances of power, accompanying and hostile instances, subjunctive
instances, instances of alliance, instances of the cross, instances
of divorce, instances of the gate, citing instances, instances of the
road, supplementary instances, lancing instances, instances of the
rod, instances of the course, doses of nature, wrestling instances,
suggesting instances, generally useful instances, and magical
instances. The advantage, by which these instances excel the more
ordinary, regards specifically either theory or practice, or both. With
regard to theory, they assist either the senses or the understanding;
the senses, as in the five instances of the lamp; the understanding,
either by expediting the exclusive mode of arriving at the form, as in
solitary instances, or by confining, and more immediately indicating
the affirmative, as in the migrating, conspicuous, accompanying, and
subjunctive instances; or by elevating the understanding, and leading
it to general and common natures, and that either immediately, as in
the clandestine and singular instances, and those of alliance; or very
nearly so, as in the constitutive; or still less so, as in the similar
instances; or by correcting the understanding of its habits, as in
the deviating instances; or by leading to the grand form or fabric of
the universe, as in the bordering instances; or by guarding it from
false forms and causes, as in those of the cross and of divorce. With
regard to practice, they either point it out, or measure, or elevate
it. They point it out, either by showing where we must commence in
order not to repeat the labors of others, as in the instances of power;
or by inducing us to aspire to that which may be possible, as in the
suggesting instances; the four mathematical instances measure it. The
generally useful and the magical elevate it.
Again, out of these twenty-seven instances, some must be collected
immediately, without waiting for a particular investigation of
properties. Such are the similar, singular, deviating, and bordering
instances, those of power, and of the gate, and suggesting, generally
useful, and magical instances; for these either assist and cure
the understanding and senses, or furnish our general practice. The
remainder are to be collected when we finish our synoptical tables for
the work of the interpreter, upon any particular nature; for these
instances, honored and gifted with such prerogatives, are like the
soul amid the vulgar crowd of instances, and (as we from the first
observed) a few of them are worth a multitude of the others. When,
therefore, we are forming our tables they must be searched out with the
greatest zeal, and placed in the table. And, since mention must be made
of them in what follows, a treatise upon their nature has necessarily
been prefixed. We must next, however, proceed to the supports and
corrections of induction, and thence to concretes, the latent process,
and latent conformations, and the other matters, which we have
enumerated in their order in the twenty-first aphorism, in order that,
like good and faithful guardians, we may yield up their fortune to
mankind upon the emancipation and majority of their understanding;
from which must necessarily follow an improvement of their estate, and
an increase of their power over nature. For man, by the fall, lost
at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both
of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by
religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation
did not become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in
consequence of the Divine decree, “in the sweat of thy brow shalt
thou eat bread,” she is compelled by our labors (not assuredly by our
disputes or magical ceremonies), at length, to afford mankind in some
degree his bread, that is to say, to supply man’s daily wants.
END OF “NOVUM ORGANUM”
FOOTNOTES
[71] Τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι, or ἦν οὐσία of Aristotle. --See lib. iii. Metap.
[72] These divisions are from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where they are
termed, 1. ὓλη ἢ τὸ ὑποκείμενον. 2. τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι. 3. ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς
κινήσεως. 4. τὸ οὗ ἕνεκεν--καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν.
[73] See Aphorism li. and second paragraph of Aphorism lxv. in the
first book.
[74] Bacon means, that although there exist in nature only
individualities, yet a certain number of these may have common
properties, and be controlled by the same laws. Now, these homogeneous
qualities which distinguish them from other individuals, lead us to
class them under one expression, and sometimes under a single term. Yet
these classes are only pure conceptions in Bacon’s opinion, and cannot
be taken for distinct substances. He evidently here aims a blow at the
Realists, who concluded that the essence which united individualities
in a class was the only real and immutable existence in nature,
inasmuch as it entered into their ideas of individual substances as
a distinct and essential property, and continued in the mind as the
mold, type or pattern of the class, while its individual forms were
undergoing perpetual renovation and decay. --_Ed. _
[75] Bacon’s definition is obscure. All the idea we have of a law of
nature consists in invariable sequence between certain classes of
phenomena; but this cannot be the complete sense attached by Bacon to
the term form, as he employs it in the fourth aphorism as convertible
with the nature of any object; and again, in the first aphorism, as
the _natura naturans_, or general law or condition in any substance
or quality--_natura naturata_--which is whatever its form is, or that
particular combination of forces which impresses a certain nature upon
matter subject to its influence. Thus, in the Newtonian sense, the
form of whiteness would be that combination of the seven primitive
rays of light which give rise to that color. In combination with this
word, and affording a still further insight into its meaning, we have
the phrases, _latens processus ad formam, et latens schematismus
corporum_. Now, the _latens schematismus_ signifies the internal
texture, structure, or configuration of bodies, or the result of the
respective situation of all the parts of a body; while the _latens
processus ad formam_ points out the gradation of movements which takes
place among the molecula of bodies when they either conserve or change
their figure. Hence we may consider the form of any quality in body
as something convertible with that quality, _i. e. _, when it exists
the quality is present, and _vice versâ_. In this sense, the form of
a thing differs only from its efficient cause in being permanent,
whereas we apply cause to that which exists in order of time. The
_latens processus_ and _latens schematismus_ are subordinate to form,
as concrete exemplifications of its essence. The former is the secret
and invisible process by which change is effected, and involves the
principle since called the law of continuity. Thus, the succession of
events between the application of the match to the expulsion of the
bullet is an instance of latent progress which we can now trace with
some degree of accuracy. It also more directly refers to the operation
by which one form or condition of being is induced upon another. For
example, when the surface of iron becomes rusty, or when water is
converted into steam, some change has taken place, or latent process
from one form to another. Mechanics afford many exemplifications of
the first latent process we have denoted, and chemistry of the second.
The _latens schematismus_ is that visible structure of bodies on
which so many of their properties depend. When we inquire into the
constitution of crystals, and into the internal structure of plants, we
are examining into their latent schematism. --_Ed. _
[76] By the recent discoveries in electric magnetism, copper wires,
or, indeed, wires of any metal, may be transformed into magnets; the
magnetic law, or form, having been to that extent discovered.
[77] Haller has pursued this investigation in his “Physiology,”
and has left his successors little else to do than repeat his
discoveries. --_Ed. _
[78] Bacon here first seems pregnant with the important development of
the higher calculus, which, in the hands of Newton and Descartes, was
to effect as great a revolution in philosophy as his method. --_Ed. _
[79] By spirit, Bacon here plainly implies material fluid too fine to
be grasped by the unassisted sense, which rather operates than reasons.
We sometimes adopt the same mode of expression, as in the words spirits
of nitre, spirits of wine. Some such agency has been assumed by nearly
all the modern physicists, a few of whom, along with Bacon, would leave
us to gather from their expressions, that they believe such bodies
endowed with the sentient powers of perception. As another specimen
of his sentiment on this subject, we may refer to a paragraph on the
decomposition of compounds, in his essay on death, beginning--“The
spirit which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due
subjection; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts
unite. ”--_Ed. _
[80] The theory of the Epicureans and others. The atoms are supposed
to be invisible, unalterable particles, endued with all the properties
of the given body, and forming that body by their union. They must
be separated, of course, which either takes a vacuum for granted, or
introduces a tertium quid into the composition of the body.
[81] Compare the three following aphorisms with the last three chapters
of the third book of the “De Augmentis Scientiarum. ”
[82] Bacon gives this unfortunate term its proper signification; μετα,
in composition, with the Greeks signifying change or mutation. Most of
our readers, no doubt, are aware that the obtrusion of this word into
technical philosophy was purely capricious, and is of no older date
than the publication of Aristotle’s works by Andronicus of Rhodes, one
of the learned men into whose hands the manuscripts of that philosopher
fell, after they were brought by Sylla from Athens to Rome. To fourteen
books in these MSS. with no distinguishing title, Andronicus is said to
have prefixed the words τα μετα τα φυσικα, to denote the place which
they ought to hold either in the order of Aristotle’s arrangement, or
in that of study. These books treat first of those subjects which are
common to matter and mind; secondly, of things separate from matter,
_i. e. _ of God, and of the subordinate spirits, which were supposed by
the Peripatetics to watch over particular portions of the universe. The
followers of Aristotle accepted the whimsical title of Andronicus, and
in their usual manner allowed a word to unite things into one science
which were plainly heterogeneous. Their error was adopted by the
Peripatetics of the Christian Church. The schoolmen added to the notion
of ontology, the science of the mind, or pneumatology, and as that
genus of being has since become extinct with the schools, metaphysics
thus in modern parlance comes to be synonymous with psychology. It were
to be wished that Bacon’s definition of the term had been accepted, and
mental science delivered from one of the greatest monstrosities in its
nomenclature, yet Bacon whimsically enough in his De Augmentis includes
mathematics in metaphysics. --_Ed. _
[83]
“Ne tenues pluviæ, rapidive potentia solis
Acrior, aut Boreæ penetrabile frigus adurat. ”
--Virg. Georg. i. 92, 93.
[84] This notion, which he repeats again, and particularizes in the
18th aph. of this book, is borrowed from the ancients, and we need not
say is as wise as their other astronomical conjectures. The sun also
approaches stars quite as large in other quarters of the zodiac, when
it looks down upon the earth through the murky clouds of winter. When
that luminary is in Leo, the heat of the earth is certainly greater
than at any other period, but this arises from the accumulation of heat
after the solstice, for the same reason that the maximum heat of the
day is at two o’clock instead of noon. --_Ed. _
[85] Bouguer, employed by Louis XIV. in philosophical researches,
ascended the Andes to discover the globular form of the earth, and
published an account of his passage, which verifies the statement of
Bacon.
[86] Montanari asserts in his book against the astrologers that he
had satisfied himself by numerous and oft-repeated experiments, that
the lunar rays gathered to a focus produced a sensible degree of
heat. Muschenbröck, however, adopts the opposite opinion, and asserts
that himself, De la Hire, Villet, and Tschirnhausen had tried with
that view the strongest burning-glasses in vain. (Opera de Igne. ) De
la Lande makes a similar confession in his Astronomy (vol. ii. vii.
§ 1413). Bouguer, whom we have just quoted, demonstrated that the
light of the moon was 300,000 degrees less than that of the sun; it
would consequently be necessary to invent a glass with an absorbing
power 300,000 degrees greater than those ordinarily in use, to try the
experiment Bacon speaks of. --_Ed. _
[87] In this thermometer, mercury was not dilated by heat or contracted
by cold, as the one now in use, but a mass of air employed instead,
which filled the cavity of the bulb. This being placed in an inverted
position to ours, that is to say, with the bulb uppermost, pressed
down the liquor when the air became dilated by heat, as ours press
it upward; and when the heat diminished, the liquor rose to occupy
the place vacated by the air, as the one now in use descends. It
consequently was liable to be affected by a change in the temperature,
as by the weight of air, and could afford only a rude standard of
accuracy in scientific investigations. This thermometer was not Bacon’s
own contrivance, as is commonly supposed, but that of Drebbel. --_Ed. _
[88] La Lande is indignant that the Chaldeans should have more correct
notions of the nature of comets than the modern physicists, and charges
Bacon with entertaining the idea that they were the mere effects of
vapor and heat. This passage, with two others more positive, in the
“De Aug. ” (cap. xl. ) and the “Descript. Globi Intellect. ” (cap. vi. )
certainly afford ground for the assertion; but if Bacon erred, he erred
with Galileo, and with the foremost spirits of the times. It is true
that Pythagoras and Seneca had asserted their belief in the solidity
of these bodies, but the wide dominion which Aristotle subsequently
exercised, threw their opinions into the shade, and made the opposite
doctrine everywhere paramount. --_Ed. _
[89] Was it a silk apron which exhibited electric sparks? Silk was then
scarce.
[90] The Italian fire-fly.
[91] This last is found to be the real reason, air not being a good
conductor, and therefore not allowing the escape of heat. The confined
air is disengaged when these substances are placed under an exhausted
receiver.
[92] This is erroneous. Air, in fact, is one of the worst, and metals
are the best conductors of heat.
[93] See No. 28 in the table of the degrees of heat.
[94] Bacon here mistakes sensation confined to ourselves for an
internal property of distinct substances. Metals are denser than wood,
and our bodies consequently coming into contact with more particles of
matter when we touch them, lose a greater quantity of heat than in the
case of lighter substances. --_Ed. _
[95] This was the ancient opinion, but the moderns incline to the
belief that these insects are produced by generation or fecundity
from seeds deposited by their tribes in bodies on the verge of
putrefaction. --_Ed. _
[96] The correct measure of the activity of flame may be obtained by
multiplying its natural force into the square of its velocity. On this
account the flame of vivid lightning mentioned in No. 23 contains so
much vigor, its velocity being greater than that arising from other
heat. --_Ed. _
[97] The fires supply fresh heat, the water has only a certain quantity
of heat, which being diffused over a fresh supply of cooler water, must
be on the whole lowered.
[98] If condensation were the cause of the greater heat, Bacon
concludes the centre of the flame would be the hotter part, and _vice
versâ_. The fact is, neither of the causes assigned by Bacon is the
true one; for the fire burns more quickly only because the draught of
air is more rapid, the cold dense air pressing rapidly into the heated
room and toward the chimney. --_Ed. _
[99] Bacon appears to have confounded combustibility and fusibility
with susceptibility of heat; for though the metals will certainly
neither dissolve as soon as ice or butter, nor be consumed as soon
as wood, that only shows that different degrees of heat are required
to produce similar effects on different bodies; but metals much more
readily acquire and transmit the same degree of heat than any of the
above substances. The rapid transmission renders them generally cold
to the touch. The convenience of fixing wooden handles to vessels
containing hot water illustrates these observations.
[100] Another singular error, the truth being, that solid bodies are
the best conductors; but of course where heat is diffused over a large
mass, it is less in each part, than if that part alone absorbed the
whole quantum of heat. --_Ed. _
[101] This general law or form has been well illustrated by Newton’s
discovery of the decomposition of colors.
[102] _I. e. _, the common link or form which connects the various
kinds of natures, such as the different hot or red natures enumerated
above. --See Aphorism iii. part 2.
[103] This is erroneous--all metals expand considerably when heated.
[104] “Quid ipsum,” the τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι of Aristotle.
[105] To show the error of the text, we need only mention the case
of water, which, when confined in corked vases, and exposed to the
action of a freezing atmosphere, is sure to swell out and break those
vessels which are not sufficiently large to contain its expanded
volume. Megalotti narrates a hundred other instances of a similar
character. --_Ed. _
[106] Bacon’s inquisition into the nature of heat, as an example of
the mode of interpreting nature, cannot be looked upon otherwise than
as a complete failure. Though the exact nature of this phenomenon is
still an obscure and controverted matter, the science of thermotics
now consists of many important truths, and to none of these truths is
there so much as an approximation in Bacon’s process. The steps by
which this science really advanced were the discovery of a measure of
a heat or temperature, the establishment of the laws of conduction and
radiation, of the laws of specific heat, latent heat, and the like.
Such advances have led to Ampère’s hypothesis, that heat consists in
the vibrations of an imponderable fluid; and to Laplace’s theory, that
temperature consists in the internal radiation of a similar medium.
These hypotheses cannot yet be said to be even probable, but at least
they are so modified as to include some of the preceding laws which
are firmly established, whereas Bacon’s “form,” or true definition of
heat, as stated in the text, includes no laws of phenomena, explains no
process, and is indeed itself an example of illicit generalization.
In all the details of his example of heat he is unfortunate. He
includes in his collection of instances, the _hot_ tastes of aromatic
plants, the caustic effects of acids, and many other facts which
cannot be ascribed to heat without a studious laxity in the use of the
word. --_Ed. _
[107] By this term Bacon understands general phenomena, taken in order
from the great mass of indiscriminative facts, which, as they lie in
nature, are apt to generate confusion by their number, indistinctness
and complication. Such classes of phenomena, as being peculiarly
suggestive of causation, he quaintly classes under the title of
prerogative inquiries, either seduced by the fanciful analogy, which
such instances bore to the _prerogativa centuria_ in the Roman Comitia,
or justly considering them as Herschel supposes to hold a kind of
prerogative dignity from being peculiarly suggestive of causation.
Two high authorities in physical science (v. Herschel, Nat. Phil. ,
art. 192; Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii.
p. 243) pronounce these instances of little service in the task of
induction, being for the most part classed not according to the ideas
which they involve, or to any obvious circumstance in the facts of
which they consist, but according to the extent and manner of their
influence upon the inquiry in which they are employed. Thus we
have solitary instances, migrating instances, ostensive instances,
clandestine instances, so termed according to the degree in which
they exhibit, or seem to exhibit, the property, whose nature we would
examine. We have guide-post instances, crucial instances, instances of
the parted road, of the doorway, of the lamp, according to the guidance
they supply to our advance. Whewell remarks that such a classification
is much of the same nature as if, having to teach the art of building,
we were to describe tools with reference to the amount and place of the
work which they must do, instead of pointing out their construction
and use; as if we were to inform the pupil that we must have tools for
lifting a stone up, tools for moving it sidewise, tools for laying it
square, and tools for cementing it firmly. The means are thus lost
in the end, and we reap the fruits of unmethodical arrangement in
the confusion of cross division. In addition, all the instances are
leavened with the error of confounding the laws with the causes of
phenomena, and we are urged to adopt the fundamental error of seeking
therein the universal agents, or general causes of phenomena, without
ascending the gradual steps of intermediate laws. --_Ed. _
[108] Of these nine general heads no more than the first is prosecuted
by the author.
[109] This very nearly approaches to Sir I. Newton’s discovery of the
decomposition of light by the prism.
[110] The mineral kingdom, as displaying the same nature in all its
gradations, from the shells so perfect in structure in limestone to the
finer marbles in which their nature gradually disappears, is the great
theatre for instances of migration. --_Ed. _
[111] Bacon was not aware of the fact since brought to light by
Römer, that down to fourteen fathoms from the earth’s mean level
the thermometer remains fixed at the tenth degree, but that as the
thermometer descends below that depth the heat increases in a ratio
proportionate to the descent, which happens with little variation in
all climates. Buffon considers this a proof of a central fire in our
planet. --_Ed. _
[112] All the diversities of bodies depend upon two principles, _i. e. _,
the quantity and the position of the elements that enter into their
composition. The primary difference is not that which depends on the
greatest or least quantity of material elements, but that which depends
on their position. It was the quick perception of this truth that made
Leibnitz say that to complete mathematics it was necessary to join to
the analysis of quantity the analysis of position. --_Ed. _
[113] Query?
[114] The real cause of this phenomenon is the attraction of the
surface-water in the vessel by the sides of the bubbles. When the
bubbles approach, the sides nearest each other both tend to raise the
small space of water between them, and consequently less water is
raised by each of these nearer sides than by the exterior part of the
bubble, and the greater weight of the water raised on the exterior
parts pushes the bubbles together. In the same manner a bubble near
the side of a vessel is pushed toward it; the vessel and bubble both
drawing the water that is between them. The latter phenomenon cannot be
explained on Bacon’s hypothesis.
[115] Modern discoveries appear to bear out the sagacity of Bacon’s
remark, and the experiments of Baron Cagnard may be regarded as a first
step toward its full demonstration. After the new facts elicited by
that philosopher, there can be little doubt that the solid, liquid
and aëriform state of bodies are merely stages in a progress of
gradual transition from one extreme to the other, and that however
strongly marked the distinctions between them may appear, they will
ultimately turn out to be separated by no sudden or violent line of
demarcation, but slide into each other by imperceptible gradations.
Bacon’s suggestion, however, is as old as Pythagoras, and perhaps
simultaneous with the first dawn of philosophic reason. The doctrine of
the reciprocal transmutation of the elements underlies all the physical
systems of the ancients, and was adopted by the Epicureans as well as
the Stoics. Ovid opens his last book of the Metamorphoses with the
poetry of the subject, where he expressly points to the hint of Bacon:--
----“Tenuatus in auras
Aëraque humor abit, etc. , etc.
* * * * * *
Inde retro redeunt, idemque retexitur ordo. ”--xv. 246–249.
and Seneca, in the third book of his Natural Philosophy, quest. iv. ,
states the opinion in more precise language than either the ancient
bard or the modern philosopher. --_Ed. _
[116] The author’s own system of Memoria Technica may be found in
the De Augmentis, chap. xv. We may add that, notwithstanding Bacon’s
assertion that he intended his method to apply to religion, politics,
and morals, this is the only lengthy illustration he has adduced of any
subject out of the domain of physical science. --_Ed. _
[117] The collective instances here meant are no other than general
facts or laws of some degree of generality, and are themselves the
result of induction. For example, the system of Jupiter, or Saturn
with its satellites, is a collective instance, and materially assisted
in securing the admission of the Copernican system. We have here in
miniature, and displayed at one view, a system analogous to that of the
planets about the sun, of which, from the circumstance of our being
involved in it, and unfavorably situated for seeing it otherwise than
in detail, we are incapacitated from forming a general idea, but by
slow and progressive efforts of reason.
But there is a species of collective instance which Bacon does not seem
to have contemplated, in which particular phenomena are presented in
such numbers at once, as to make the induction of their law a matter
of ocular inspection. For example, the parabolic form assumed by a
jet of water spouted out of a hole is a collective instance of the
velocities and directions of the motions of all the particles which
compose it seen together, and which thus leads us without trouble to
recognize the law of the motion of a projectile. Again, the beautiful
figures exhibited by sand strewed on regular plates of glass or metal
set in vibration, are collective instances of an infinite number of
points which remain at rest while the remainder of the plate vibrates,
and in consequence afford us an insight into the law which regulates
their arrangement and sequence throughout the whole surface. The richly
colored lemniscates seen around the optic axis of crystals exposed to
polarized light afford a striking instance of the same kind, pointing
at once to the general mathematical expression of the law which
regulates their production. Such collective instances as these lead us
to a general law by an induction which offers itself spontaneously,
and thus furnish advanced posts in philosophical exploration. The laws
of Kepler, which Bacon ignored on account of his want of mathematical
taste, may be cited as a collective instance. The first is, that the
planets move in elliptical orbits, having the sun for their common
focus. The second, that about this focus the _radius vector_ of each
planet describes equal areas in equal times. The third, that the
squares of the periodic times of the planets are as the cubes of their
mean distance from the sun. This collective instance “opened the way”
to the discovery of the Newtonian law of gravitation. --_Ed. _
[118] Is not this very hasty generalization? Do serpents move with four
folds only? Observe also the motion of centipedes and other insects.
[119] Shaw states another point of difference between the objects cited
in the text--animals having their roots within, while plants have
theirs without; for their lacteals nearly correspond with the fibres of
the roots in plants; so that animals seem nourished within themselves
as plants are without. --_Ed. _
[120] Bacon falls into an error here in regarding the syllogism as
something distinct from the reasoning faculty, and only one of its
forms. It is not generally true that the syllogism is only a form of
reasoning by which we unite ideas which accord with the middle term.
This agreement is not even essential to accurate syllogisms; when the
relation of the two things compared to the third is one of equality or
similitude, it of course follows that the two things compared may be
pronounced equal, or like to each other. But if the relation between
these terms exist in a different form, then it is not true that the
two extremes stand in the same relation to each other as to the middle
term. For instance, if =A= is double of =B=, and =B= double of =C=,
then =A= is quadruple of =C=. But then the relation of =A= to =C= is
different from that of =A= to =B= and of =B= to =C=. --_Ed. _
[121] Comparative anatomy is full of analogies of this kind. Those
between natural and artificial productions are well worthy of
attention, and sometimes lead to important discoveries. By observing
an analogy of this kind between the plan used in hydraulic engines for
preventing the counter-current of a fluid, and a similar contrivance in
the blood vessels, Harvey was led to the discovery of the circulation
of the blood. --_Ed. _
[122] This is well illustrated in plants, for the gardener can produce
endless varieties of any known species, but can never produce a new
species itself.
[123] The discoveries of Tournefort have placed moss in the class
of plants. The fish alluded to below are to be found only in the
tropics. --_Ed. _
[124] There is, however, no real approximation to birds in either the
flying fish or bat, any more than a man approximates to a fish because
he can swim. The wings of the flying fish and bat are mere expansions
of skin, bearing no resemblance whatever to those of birds. --_Ed. _
[125] Seneca was a sounder astronomer than Bacon. He ridiculed the idea
of the motion of any heavenly bodies being irregular, and predicted
that the day would come, when the laws which guided the revolution
of these bodies would be proved to be identical with those which
controlled the motions of the planets. The anticipation, was realized
by Newton. --_Ed. _
[126] But see Bacon’s own corollary at the end of the Instances of
Divorce, Aphorism xxxvii. If Bacon’s remark be accepted, the censure
will fall upon Newton and the system so generally received at the
present day. It is, however, unjust, as the centre of which Newton so
often speaks is not a point with an active inherent force, but only
the result of all the particular and reciprocal attractions of the
different parts of the planet acting upon one spot. It is evident, that
if all these forces were united in this centre, that the sum would be
equal to all their partial effects. --_Ed. _
[127] Since Newton’s discovery of the law of gravitation, we find that
the attractive force of the earth must extend to an infinite distance.
Bacon himself alludes to the operation of this attractive force at
great distances in the Instances of the Rod, Aphorism xlv.
[128] Snow reflects light, but is not a source of light.
[129] Bacon’s sagacity here foreshadows Newton’s theory of the tides.
[130] The error in the text arose from Bacon’s impression that
the earth was immovable. It is evident, since gravitation acts at
an infinite distance, that no such point could be found; and even
supposing the impossible point of equilibrium discovered, the body
could not maintain its position an instant, but would be hurried, at
the first movement of the heavenly bodies, in the direction of the
dominant gravitating power. --_Ed. _
[131] Fly clocks are referred to in the text, not pendulum clocks,
which were not known in England till 1662. The former, though clumsy
and rude in their construction, still embodied sound mechanical
principles. The comparison of the effect of a spring with that of a
weight in producing certain motions in certain times on altitudes and
in mines, has recently been tried by Professors Airy and Whewell in
Dalcoath mine, by means of a pendulum, which is only a weight moved by
gravity, and a chronometer balance moved and regulated by a spring.
In his thirty-seventh Aphorism, Bacon also speaks of gravity as an
incorporeal power, acting at a distance, and requiring time for its
transmission; a consideration which occurred at a later period to
Laplace in one of his most delicate investigations.
Crucial instances, as Herschel remarks, afford the readiest and
securest means of eliminating extraneous causes, and deciding between
the claims of rival hypotheses; especially when these, running parallel
to each other, in the explanation of great classes of phenomena, at
length come to be placed at issue upon a single fact. A curious example
is given by M. Fresnel, as decisive in his mind of the question between
the two great theories on the nature of light, which, since the time
of Newton and Huyghens, have divided philosophers. When two very clean
glasses are laid one on the other, if they be not perfectly flat, but
one or both, in an almost imperceptible degree, convex or prominent,
beautiful and vivid colors will be seen between them; and if these be
viewed through a red glass, their appearance will be that of alternate
dark and bright stripes. These stripes are formed between the two
surfaces in apparent contact, and being applicable on both theories,
are appealed to by their respective supporters as strong confirmatory
facts; but there is a difference in one circumstance, according as
one or other theory is employed to explain them. In the case of the
Huyghenian theory, the intervals between the bright stripes ought to
appear absolutely black, when a prism is used for the upper glass, in
the other half bright. This curious case of difference was tried, as
soon as the opposing consequences of the two theories were noted by
M. Fresnel, and the result is stated by him to be decisive in favor
of that theory which makes light to consist in the vibrations of an
elastic medium. --_Ed. _
[132] Bacon plainly, from this passage, was inclined to believe that
the moon, like the comets, was nothing more than illuminated vapor. The
Newtonian law, however, has not only established its solidity, but its
density and weight. A sufficient proof of the former is afforded by the
attraction of the sea, and the moon’s motion round the earth. --_Ed. _
[133] Rather the refraction; the sky or air, however, _reflects_ the
blue rays of light.
[134] The polished surface of the glass causes the reflection in this
case, and not the air; and a hat or other black surface put behind the
window in the daytime will enable the glass to reflect distinctly for
the same reason, namely, that the reflected rays are not mixed and
confused with those transmitted from the other side of the window.
[135] These instances, which Bacon seems to consider as a great
discovery, are nothing more than disjunctive propositions combined
with dilemmas. In proposing to explain an effect, we commence with
the enumeration of the different causes which seem connected with
its production; then with the aid of one or more dilemmas, we
eliminate each of the phenomena accidental to its composition, and
conclude with attributing the effect to the residue. For instance, a
certain phenomenon (_a_) is produced either by phenomenon (=B=) or
phenomenon (=C=); but =C= cannot be the cause of _a_, for it is found
in =D=, =E=, =F=, neither of which are connected with _a_. Then the
true cause of phenomenon (_a_) must be phenomenon (=B=).
This species of reasoning is liable to several paralogisms, against
which Bacon has not guarded his readers, from the very fact that he
stumbled into them unwittingly himself. The two principal ones are
false exclusions and defective enumerations. Bacon, in his survey of
the causes which are able to concur in producing the phenomena of the
tides, takes no account of the periodic melting of the Polar ice, or
the expansion of water by the solar heat; nor does he fare better in
his exclusions. For the attraction of the planets and the progression
and retrograde motion communicated by the earth’s diurnal revolution,
can plainly affect the sea together, and have a simultaneous influence
on its surface.
Bacon is hardly just or consistent in his censure of Ramus; the end of
whose dichotomy was only to render reasoning by dilemma, and crucial
instances, more certain in their results, by reducing the divisions
which composed their parts to two sets of contradictory propositions.
The affirmative or negative of one would then necessarily have led to
the acceptance or rejection of the other. --_Ed. _
[136] Père Shenier first pointed out the spots on the sun’s disk, and
by the marks which they afforded him, computed its revolution to be
performed in twenty-five days and some hours. --_Ed. _
[137] Rust is now well known to be a chemical combination of oxygen
with the metal, and the metal when rusty acquires additional weight.
His theory as to the generation of animals, is deduced from the
erroneous notion of the possibility of spontaneous generation (as it
was termed). See the next paragraph but one.
[138]
“Limus ut hic durescit, et hæc ut cera liquescit
Uno eodemque igni. ”--Virg. Ecl. viii.
[139] See Table of Degrees, No. 38.
[140] Riccati, and all modern physicists, discover some portion of
light in every body, which seems to confirm the passage in Genesis that
assigns to this substance priority in creation. --_Ed. _
[141] As instances of this kind, which the progress of science since
the time of Bacon affords, we may cite the air-pump and the barometer,
for manifesting the weight and elasticity of air: the measurement
of the velocity of light, by means of the occultation of Jupiter’s
satellites and the aberration of the fixed stars: the experiments
in electricity and galvanism, and in the greater part of pneumatic
chemistry. In all these cases scientific facts are elicited, which
sense could never have revealed to us. --_Ed. _
[142] The itinerant instances, as well as frontier instances, are
cases in which we are enabled to trace the general law of continuity
which seems to pervade all nature, and which has been aptly embodied
in the sentence, “natura non agit per saltum. ” The pursuit of this law
into phenomena where its application is not at first sight obvious,
has opened a mine of physical discovery, and led us to perceive an
intimate connection between facts which at first seemed hostile to each
other. For example, the transparency of gold-leaf, which permits a
bluish-green light to pass through it, is a frontier instance between
transparent and opaque bodies, by exhibiting a body of the glass
generally regarded the most opaque in nature, as still possessed of
some slight degree of transparency. It thus proves that the quality
of opacity is not a contrary or antagonistic quality to that of
transparency, but only its extreme lowest degree.
[143] Alluding to his theory of atoms.
[144] Observe the approximation to Newton’s theory. The same notion
repeated still more clearly in the ninth motion. Newton believed
that the planets might so conspire as to derange the earth’s annual
revolution, and to elongate the line of the apsides and ellipsis that
the earth describes in its annual revolution round the sun. In the
supposition that all the planets meet on the same straight line, Venus
and Mercury on one side of the sun, and the earth, moon, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn on the side diametrically opposite; then Saturn would
attract Jupiter, Jupiter Mars, Mars the moon, which must in its turn
attract the earth in proportion to the force with which it was drawn
out of its orbit. The result of this combined action on our planet
would elongate its ecliptic orbit, and so far draw it from the source
of heat, as to produce an intensity of cold destructive to animal
life. But this movement would immediately cease with the planetary
concurrence which produced it, and the earth, like a compressed spring,
bound almost as near to the sun as she had been drawn from it, the
reaction of the heat on its surface being about as intense as the cold
caused by the first removal was severe. The earth, until it gained its
regular track, would thus alternately vibrate between each side of
its orbit, with successive changes in its atmosphere, proportional to
the square of the variation of its distance from the sun. In no place
is Bacon’s genius more conspicuous than in these repeated guesses at
truth. He would have been a strong Copernican, had not Gilbert defended
the system. --_Ed. _
[145] This is not true except when the projectile acquires greater
velocity at every successive instant of its course, which is never
the case except with falling bodies. Bacon appears to have been led
into the opinion from observing that gunshots pierce many objects
at a distance from which they rebound when brought within a certain
proximity of contact. This apparent inconsistency, however, arises from
the resistance of the parts of the object, which velocity combined with
force is necessary to overcome. --_Ed. _
[146] This passage shows that the pressure of the external atmosphere,
which forces the water into the egg, was not in Bacon’s time
understood. --_Ed. _
[147] We have already alluded, in a note prefixed to the same aphorism
of the first book, to Newton’s error of the absolute lightness of
bodies. In speaking again of the volatile or spiritual substances
(Aph. xl. b. ii. ) which he supposed with the Platonists and some of the
schoolmen to enter into the composition of every body, he ascribes to
them a power of lessening the weight of the material coating in which
he supposes them inclosed. It would appear from these passages and the
text that Bacon had no idea of the relative density of bodies, and the
capability which some have to diminish the specific gravity of the
heavier substances by the dilation of their parts; or if he had, the
reveries in which Aristotle indulged in treating of the soul, about the
appetency of bodies to fly to kindred substances--flame and spirit to
the sky, and solid opaque substances to the earth, must have vitiated
his mind. --_Ed. _
[148] Römer, a Danish astronomer, was the first to demonstrate, by
connecting the irregularities of the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites
with their distances from the earth, the necessity of time for the
propagation of light. The idea occurred to Dominic Cassini as well as
Bacon, but both allowed the discovery to slip out of their hands. --_Ed. _
[149] The author in the text confounds inertness, which is a simple
indifference of bodies to action, with gravity, which is a force acting
always in proportion to their density. He falls into the same error
further on. --_Ed. _
[150] The experiments of the last two classes of instances are
considered only in relation to practice, and Bacon does not so much as
mention their infinitely greater importance in the theoretical part of
induction. The important law of gravitation in physical astronomy could
never have been demonstrated but by such observations and experiments
as assigned accurate geometrical measures to the quantities compared.
It was necessary to determine with precision the demi-diameter of the
earth, the velocity of falling bodies at its surface, the distance of
the moon, and the speed with which she describes her orbit, before the
relation could be discovered between the force which draws a stone to
the ground and that which retains the moon in her sphere.
In many cases the result of a number of particular facts, or the
collective instances rising out of them, can only be discovered by
geometry, which so far becomes necessary to complete the work of
induction. For instance, in the case of optics, when light passes from
one transparent medium to another, it is refracted, and the angle
which the ray of incidence makes with the superficies which bounds the
two media determines that which the refracted ray makes with the same
superficies. Now, all experiment can do for us in this case is, to
determine for any particular angle of incidence the corresponding angle
of refraction. But with respect to the general rule which in every
possible case deduces one of these angles from the other, or expresses
the constant and invariable relation which subsists between them,
experiment gives no direct information. Geometry must, consequently,
be called in, which, when a constant though unknown relation subsists
between two angles, or two variable qualities of any kind, and when
an indefinite number of values of those quantities are assigned,
furnishes infallible means of discovering that unknown relation either
accurately or by approximation. In this way it has been found, when
the two media remain the same, the cosines of the above-mentioned
angles have a constant ratio to each other. Hence, when the relations
of the simple elements of phenomena are discovered to afford a general
rule which will apply to any concrete case, the deductive method must
be applied, and the elementary principles made through its agency to
account for the laws of their more complex combinations. The reflection
and refraction of light by the rain falling from a cloud opposite to
the sun was thought, even before Newton’s day, to contain the _form_ of
the rainbow.
mercury, water, aqueous vapor, air, and, perhaps, pure inter-sidereal
ether. Yet do these two quaternions, or great natural tribes (each
within its own limits), differ immensely in quantity and density of
substance, while they generally agree in conformation, as is manifest
in many instances. On the other hand, the metals agree in such quantity
and density (especially when compared with vegetables, etc. ), but
differ in many respects in conformation. Animals and vegetables, in
like manner, vary in their almost infinite modes of conformation, but
range within very limited degrees of quantity and density of substance.
The next most general correspondence is that between individual bodies
and those which supply them by way of menstruum or support. Inquiry,
therefore, must be made as to the climate, soil, and depth at which
each metal is generated, and the same of gems, whether produced in
rocks or mines, also as to the soil in which particular trees, shrubs,
and herbs, mostly grow and, as it were, delight; and as to the best
species of manure, whether dung, chalk, sea sand, or ashes, etc. , and
their different propriety and advantage according to the variety of
soils. So also the grafting and setting of trees and plants (as regards
the readiness of grafting one particular species on another) depends
very much upon harmony, and it would be amusing to try an experiment
I have lately heard of, in grafting forest trees (garden trees alone
having hitherto been adopted), by which means the leaves and fruit
are enlarged, and the trees produce more shade. The specific food of
animals again should be observed, as well as that which cannot be used.
Thus the carnivorous cannot be fed on herbs, for which reason the order
of feuilletans, the experiment having been made, has nearly vanished;
human nature being incapable of supporting their regimen, although the
human will has more power over the bodily frame than that of other
animals. The different kinds of putrefaction from which animals are
generated should be noted.
The harmony of principal bodies with those subordinate to them (such
indeed may be deemed those we have alluded to above) are sufficiently
manifest, to which may be added those that exist between different
bodies and their objects, and, since these latter are more apparent,
they may throw great light when well observed and diligently examined
upon those which are more latent.
The more internal harmony and aversion, or friendship and enmity
(for superstition and folly have rendered the terms of sympathy and
antipathy almost disgusting), have been either falsely assigned,
or mixed with fable, or most rarely discovered from neglect. For if
one were to allege that there is an enmity between the vine and the
cabbage, because they will not come up well when sown together, there
is a sufficient reason for it in the succulent and absorbent nature
of each plant, so that the one defrauds the other. Again, if one were
to say that there is a harmony and friendship between the corn and
the corn-flower, or the wild poppy, because the latter seldom grow
anywhere but in cultivated soils, he ought rather to say, there is an
enmity between them, for the poppy and the corn-flower are produced and
created by those juices which the corn has left and rejected, so that
the sowing of the corn prepares the ground for their production. And
there are a vast number of similar false assertions. As for fables,
they must be totally exterminated. There remains, then, but a scanty
supply of such species of harmony as has borne the test of experiment,
such as that between the magnet and iron, gold and quicksilver, and
the like. In chemical experiments on metals, however, there are some
others worthy of notice, but the greatest abundance (where the whole
are so few in numbers) is discovered in certain medicines, which,
from their occult and specific qualities (as they are termed), affect
particular limbs, humors, diseases, or constitutions. Nor should we
omit the harmony between the motion and phenomena of the moon, and
their effects on lower bodies, which may be brought together by an
accurate and honest selection from the experiments of agriculture,
navigation, and medicine, or of other sciences. By as much as these
general instances, however, of more latent harmony, are rare, with
so much the more diligence are they to be inquired after, through
tradition, and faithful and honest reports, but without rashness
and credulity, with an anxious and, as it were, hesitating degree of
reliance. There remains one species of harmony which, though simple in
its mode of action, is yet most valuable in its use, and must by no
means be omitted, but rather diligently investigated. It is the ready
or difficult coition or union of bodies in composition, or simple
juxtaposition. For some bodies readily and willingly mix, and are
incorporated, others tardily and perversely; thus powders mix best with
water, chalk and ashes with oils, and the like. Nor are these instances
of readiness and aversion to mixture to be alone collected, but others,
also, of the collocation, distribution, and digestion of the parts when
mingled, and the predominance after the mixture is complete.
7. Lastly, there remains the seventh, and last of the seven, modes
of action; namely, that by the alternation and interchange of the
other six; but of this, it will not be the right time to offer any
examples, until some deeper investigation shall have taken place of
each of the others. The series, or chain of this alternation, in its
mode of application to separate effects, is no less powerful in its
operation than difficult to be traced. But men are possessed with the
most extreme impatience, both of such inquiries, and their practical
application, although it be the clew of the labyrinth in all greater
works. Thus far of the generally useful instances.
LI. The twenty-seventh and last place we will assign to the magical
instances, a term which we apply to those where the matter or efficient
agent is scanty or small, in comparison with the grandeur of the work
or effect produced; so that even when common they appear miraculous,
some at first sight, others even upon more attentive observation.
Nature, however, of herself, supplies these but sparingly. What she
will do when her whole store is thrown open, and after the discovery
of forms, processes, and conformation, will appear hereafter. As far
as we can yet conjecture, these magic effects are produced in three
ways, either by self-multiplication, as in fire, and the poisons termed
specific, and the motions transferred and multiplied from wheel to
wheel; or by the excitement, or, as it were, invitation of another
substance, as in the magnet, which excites innumerable needles without
losing or diminishing its power; and again in leaven, and the like; or
by the excess of rapidity of one species of motion over another, as
has been observed in the case of gunpowder, cannon, and mines. The two
former require an investigation of harmonies, the latter of a measure
of motion. Whether there be any mode of changing bodies _per minima_
(as it is termed), and transferring the delicate conformations of
matter, which is of importance in all transformations of bodies, so as
to enable art to effect, in a short time, that which nature works out
by divers expedients, is a point of which we have as yet no indication.
But, as we aspire to the extremest and highest results in that which is
solid and true, so do we ever detest, and, as far as in us lies, expel
all that is empty and vain.
LII. Let this suffice as to the respective dignity of prerogatives of
instances. But it must be noted, that in this our organ, we treat of
logic, and not of philosophy. Seeing, however, that our logic instructs
and informs the understanding, in order that it may not, with the small
hooks, as it were, of the mind, catch at, and grasp mere abstractions,
but rather actually penetrate nature, and discover the properties and
effects of bodies, and the determinate laws of their substance (so
that this science of ours springs from the nature of things, as well as
from that of the mind); it is not to be wondered at, if it have been
continually interspersed and illustrated with natural observations and
experiments, as instances of our method. The prerogative instances are,
as appears from what has preceded, twenty-seven in number, and are
termed, solitary instances, migrating instances, conspicuous instances,
clandestine instances, constitutive instances, similar instances,
singular instances, deviating instances, bordering instances,
instances of power, accompanying and hostile instances, subjunctive
instances, instances of alliance, instances of the cross, instances
of divorce, instances of the gate, citing instances, instances of the
road, supplementary instances, lancing instances, instances of the
rod, instances of the course, doses of nature, wrestling instances,
suggesting instances, generally useful instances, and magical
instances. The advantage, by which these instances excel the more
ordinary, regards specifically either theory or practice, or both. With
regard to theory, they assist either the senses or the understanding;
the senses, as in the five instances of the lamp; the understanding,
either by expediting the exclusive mode of arriving at the form, as in
solitary instances, or by confining, and more immediately indicating
the affirmative, as in the migrating, conspicuous, accompanying, and
subjunctive instances; or by elevating the understanding, and leading
it to general and common natures, and that either immediately, as in
the clandestine and singular instances, and those of alliance; or very
nearly so, as in the constitutive; or still less so, as in the similar
instances; or by correcting the understanding of its habits, as in
the deviating instances; or by leading to the grand form or fabric of
the universe, as in the bordering instances; or by guarding it from
false forms and causes, as in those of the cross and of divorce. With
regard to practice, they either point it out, or measure, or elevate
it. They point it out, either by showing where we must commence in
order not to repeat the labors of others, as in the instances of power;
or by inducing us to aspire to that which may be possible, as in the
suggesting instances; the four mathematical instances measure it. The
generally useful and the magical elevate it.
Again, out of these twenty-seven instances, some must be collected
immediately, without waiting for a particular investigation of
properties. Such are the similar, singular, deviating, and bordering
instances, those of power, and of the gate, and suggesting, generally
useful, and magical instances; for these either assist and cure
the understanding and senses, or furnish our general practice. The
remainder are to be collected when we finish our synoptical tables for
the work of the interpreter, upon any particular nature; for these
instances, honored and gifted with such prerogatives, are like the
soul amid the vulgar crowd of instances, and (as we from the first
observed) a few of them are worth a multitude of the others. When,
therefore, we are forming our tables they must be searched out with the
greatest zeal, and placed in the table. And, since mention must be made
of them in what follows, a treatise upon their nature has necessarily
been prefixed. We must next, however, proceed to the supports and
corrections of induction, and thence to concretes, the latent process,
and latent conformations, and the other matters, which we have
enumerated in their order in the twenty-first aphorism, in order that,
like good and faithful guardians, we may yield up their fortune to
mankind upon the emancipation and majority of their understanding;
from which must necessarily follow an improvement of their estate, and
an increase of their power over nature. For man, by the fall, lost
at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both
of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by
religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation
did not become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in
consequence of the Divine decree, “in the sweat of thy brow shalt
thou eat bread,” she is compelled by our labors (not assuredly by our
disputes or magical ceremonies), at length, to afford mankind in some
degree his bread, that is to say, to supply man’s daily wants.
END OF “NOVUM ORGANUM”
FOOTNOTES
[71] Τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι, or ἦν οὐσία of Aristotle. --See lib. iii. Metap.
[72] These divisions are from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where they are
termed, 1. ὓλη ἢ τὸ ὑποκείμενον. 2. τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι. 3. ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς
κινήσεως. 4. τὸ οὗ ἕνεκεν--καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν.
[73] See Aphorism li. and second paragraph of Aphorism lxv. in the
first book.
[74] Bacon means, that although there exist in nature only
individualities, yet a certain number of these may have common
properties, and be controlled by the same laws. Now, these homogeneous
qualities which distinguish them from other individuals, lead us to
class them under one expression, and sometimes under a single term. Yet
these classes are only pure conceptions in Bacon’s opinion, and cannot
be taken for distinct substances. He evidently here aims a blow at the
Realists, who concluded that the essence which united individualities
in a class was the only real and immutable existence in nature,
inasmuch as it entered into their ideas of individual substances as
a distinct and essential property, and continued in the mind as the
mold, type or pattern of the class, while its individual forms were
undergoing perpetual renovation and decay. --_Ed. _
[75] Bacon’s definition is obscure. All the idea we have of a law of
nature consists in invariable sequence between certain classes of
phenomena; but this cannot be the complete sense attached by Bacon to
the term form, as he employs it in the fourth aphorism as convertible
with the nature of any object; and again, in the first aphorism, as
the _natura naturans_, or general law or condition in any substance
or quality--_natura naturata_--which is whatever its form is, or that
particular combination of forces which impresses a certain nature upon
matter subject to its influence. Thus, in the Newtonian sense, the
form of whiteness would be that combination of the seven primitive
rays of light which give rise to that color. In combination with this
word, and affording a still further insight into its meaning, we have
the phrases, _latens processus ad formam, et latens schematismus
corporum_. Now, the _latens schematismus_ signifies the internal
texture, structure, or configuration of bodies, or the result of the
respective situation of all the parts of a body; while the _latens
processus ad formam_ points out the gradation of movements which takes
place among the molecula of bodies when they either conserve or change
their figure. Hence we may consider the form of any quality in body
as something convertible with that quality, _i. e. _, when it exists
the quality is present, and _vice versâ_. In this sense, the form of
a thing differs only from its efficient cause in being permanent,
whereas we apply cause to that which exists in order of time. The
_latens processus_ and _latens schematismus_ are subordinate to form,
as concrete exemplifications of its essence. The former is the secret
and invisible process by which change is effected, and involves the
principle since called the law of continuity. Thus, the succession of
events between the application of the match to the expulsion of the
bullet is an instance of latent progress which we can now trace with
some degree of accuracy. It also more directly refers to the operation
by which one form or condition of being is induced upon another. For
example, when the surface of iron becomes rusty, or when water is
converted into steam, some change has taken place, or latent process
from one form to another. Mechanics afford many exemplifications of
the first latent process we have denoted, and chemistry of the second.
The _latens schematismus_ is that visible structure of bodies on
which so many of their properties depend. When we inquire into the
constitution of crystals, and into the internal structure of plants, we
are examining into their latent schematism. --_Ed. _
[76] By the recent discoveries in electric magnetism, copper wires,
or, indeed, wires of any metal, may be transformed into magnets; the
magnetic law, or form, having been to that extent discovered.
[77] Haller has pursued this investigation in his “Physiology,”
and has left his successors little else to do than repeat his
discoveries. --_Ed. _
[78] Bacon here first seems pregnant with the important development of
the higher calculus, which, in the hands of Newton and Descartes, was
to effect as great a revolution in philosophy as his method. --_Ed. _
[79] By spirit, Bacon here plainly implies material fluid too fine to
be grasped by the unassisted sense, which rather operates than reasons.
We sometimes adopt the same mode of expression, as in the words spirits
of nitre, spirits of wine. Some such agency has been assumed by nearly
all the modern physicists, a few of whom, along with Bacon, would leave
us to gather from their expressions, that they believe such bodies
endowed with the sentient powers of perception. As another specimen
of his sentiment on this subject, we may refer to a paragraph on the
decomposition of compounds, in his essay on death, beginning--“The
spirit which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due
subjection; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts
unite. ”--_Ed. _
[80] The theory of the Epicureans and others. The atoms are supposed
to be invisible, unalterable particles, endued with all the properties
of the given body, and forming that body by their union. They must
be separated, of course, which either takes a vacuum for granted, or
introduces a tertium quid into the composition of the body.
[81] Compare the three following aphorisms with the last three chapters
of the third book of the “De Augmentis Scientiarum. ”
[82] Bacon gives this unfortunate term its proper signification; μετα,
in composition, with the Greeks signifying change or mutation. Most of
our readers, no doubt, are aware that the obtrusion of this word into
technical philosophy was purely capricious, and is of no older date
than the publication of Aristotle’s works by Andronicus of Rhodes, one
of the learned men into whose hands the manuscripts of that philosopher
fell, after they were brought by Sylla from Athens to Rome. To fourteen
books in these MSS. with no distinguishing title, Andronicus is said to
have prefixed the words τα μετα τα φυσικα, to denote the place which
they ought to hold either in the order of Aristotle’s arrangement, or
in that of study. These books treat first of those subjects which are
common to matter and mind; secondly, of things separate from matter,
_i. e. _ of God, and of the subordinate spirits, which were supposed by
the Peripatetics to watch over particular portions of the universe. The
followers of Aristotle accepted the whimsical title of Andronicus, and
in their usual manner allowed a word to unite things into one science
which were plainly heterogeneous. Their error was adopted by the
Peripatetics of the Christian Church. The schoolmen added to the notion
of ontology, the science of the mind, or pneumatology, and as that
genus of being has since become extinct with the schools, metaphysics
thus in modern parlance comes to be synonymous with psychology. It were
to be wished that Bacon’s definition of the term had been accepted, and
mental science delivered from one of the greatest monstrosities in its
nomenclature, yet Bacon whimsically enough in his De Augmentis includes
mathematics in metaphysics. --_Ed. _
[83]
“Ne tenues pluviæ, rapidive potentia solis
Acrior, aut Boreæ penetrabile frigus adurat. ”
--Virg. Georg. i. 92, 93.
[84] This notion, which he repeats again, and particularizes in the
18th aph. of this book, is borrowed from the ancients, and we need not
say is as wise as their other astronomical conjectures. The sun also
approaches stars quite as large in other quarters of the zodiac, when
it looks down upon the earth through the murky clouds of winter. When
that luminary is in Leo, the heat of the earth is certainly greater
than at any other period, but this arises from the accumulation of heat
after the solstice, for the same reason that the maximum heat of the
day is at two o’clock instead of noon. --_Ed. _
[85] Bouguer, employed by Louis XIV. in philosophical researches,
ascended the Andes to discover the globular form of the earth, and
published an account of his passage, which verifies the statement of
Bacon.
[86] Montanari asserts in his book against the astrologers that he
had satisfied himself by numerous and oft-repeated experiments, that
the lunar rays gathered to a focus produced a sensible degree of
heat. Muschenbröck, however, adopts the opposite opinion, and asserts
that himself, De la Hire, Villet, and Tschirnhausen had tried with
that view the strongest burning-glasses in vain. (Opera de Igne. ) De
la Lande makes a similar confession in his Astronomy (vol. ii. vii.
§ 1413). Bouguer, whom we have just quoted, demonstrated that the
light of the moon was 300,000 degrees less than that of the sun; it
would consequently be necessary to invent a glass with an absorbing
power 300,000 degrees greater than those ordinarily in use, to try the
experiment Bacon speaks of. --_Ed. _
[87] In this thermometer, mercury was not dilated by heat or contracted
by cold, as the one now in use, but a mass of air employed instead,
which filled the cavity of the bulb. This being placed in an inverted
position to ours, that is to say, with the bulb uppermost, pressed
down the liquor when the air became dilated by heat, as ours press
it upward; and when the heat diminished, the liquor rose to occupy
the place vacated by the air, as the one now in use descends. It
consequently was liable to be affected by a change in the temperature,
as by the weight of air, and could afford only a rude standard of
accuracy in scientific investigations. This thermometer was not Bacon’s
own contrivance, as is commonly supposed, but that of Drebbel. --_Ed. _
[88] La Lande is indignant that the Chaldeans should have more correct
notions of the nature of comets than the modern physicists, and charges
Bacon with entertaining the idea that they were the mere effects of
vapor and heat. This passage, with two others more positive, in the
“De Aug. ” (cap. xl. ) and the “Descript. Globi Intellect. ” (cap. vi. )
certainly afford ground for the assertion; but if Bacon erred, he erred
with Galileo, and with the foremost spirits of the times. It is true
that Pythagoras and Seneca had asserted their belief in the solidity
of these bodies, but the wide dominion which Aristotle subsequently
exercised, threw their opinions into the shade, and made the opposite
doctrine everywhere paramount. --_Ed. _
[89] Was it a silk apron which exhibited electric sparks? Silk was then
scarce.
[90] The Italian fire-fly.
[91] This last is found to be the real reason, air not being a good
conductor, and therefore not allowing the escape of heat. The confined
air is disengaged when these substances are placed under an exhausted
receiver.
[92] This is erroneous. Air, in fact, is one of the worst, and metals
are the best conductors of heat.
[93] See No. 28 in the table of the degrees of heat.
[94] Bacon here mistakes sensation confined to ourselves for an
internal property of distinct substances. Metals are denser than wood,
and our bodies consequently coming into contact with more particles of
matter when we touch them, lose a greater quantity of heat than in the
case of lighter substances. --_Ed. _
[95] This was the ancient opinion, but the moderns incline to the
belief that these insects are produced by generation or fecundity
from seeds deposited by their tribes in bodies on the verge of
putrefaction. --_Ed. _
[96] The correct measure of the activity of flame may be obtained by
multiplying its natural force into the square of its velocity. On this
account the flame of vivid lightning mentioned in No. 23 contains so
much vigor, its velocity being greater than that arising from other
heat. --_Ed. _
[97] The fires supply fresh heat, the water has only a certain quantity
of heat, which being diffused over a fresh supply of cooler water, must
be on the whole lowered.
[98] If condensation were the cause of the greater heat, Bacon
concludes the centre of the flame would be the hotter part, and _vice
versâ_. The fact is, neither of the causes assigned by Bacon is the
true one; for the fire burns more quickly only because the draught of
air is more rapid, the cold dense air pressing rapidly into the heated
room and toward the chimney. --_Ed. _
[99] Bacon appears to have confounded combustibility and fusibility
with susceptibility of heat; for though the metals will certainly
neither dissolve as soon as ice or butter, nor be consumed as soon
as wood, that only shows that different degrees of heat are required
to produce similar effects on different bodies; but metals much more
readily acquire and transmit the same degree of heat than any of the
above substances. The rapid transmission renders them generally cold
to the touch. The convenience of fixing wooden handles to vessels
containing hot water illustrates these observations.
[100] Another singular error, the truth being, that solid bodies are
the best conductors; but of course where heat is diffused over a large
mass, it is less in each part, than if that part alone absorbed the
whole quantum of heat. --_Ed. _
[101] This general law or form has been well illustrated by Newton’s
discovery of the decomposition of colors.
[102] _I. e. _, the common link or form which connects the various
kinds of natures, such as the different hot or red natures enumerated
above. --See Aphorism iii. part 2.
[103] This is erroneous--all metals expand considerably when heated.
[104] “Quid ipsum,” the τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι of Aristotle.
[105] To show the error of the text, we need only mention the case
of water, which, when confined in corked vases, and exposed to the
action of a freezing atmosphere, is sure to swell out and break those
vessels which are not sufficiently large to contain its expanded
volume. Megalotti narrates a hundred other instances of a similar
character. --_Ed. _
[106] Bacon’s inquisition into the nature of heat, as an example of
the mode of interpreting nature, cannot be looked upon otherwise than
as a complete failure. Though the exact nature of this phenomenon is
still an obscure and controverted matter, the science of thermotics
now consists of many important truths, and to none of these truths is
there so much as an approximation in Bacon’s process. The steps by
which this science really advanced were the discovery of a measure of
a heat or temperature, the establishment of the laws of conduction and
radiation, of the laws of specific heat, latent heat, and the like.
Such advances have led to Ampère’s hypothesis, that heat consists in
the vibrations of an imponderable fluid; and to Laplace’s theory, that
temperature consists in the internal radiation of a similar medium.
These hypotheses cannot yet be said to be even probable, but at least
they are so modified as to include some of the preceding laws which
are firmly established, whereas Bacon’s “form,” or true definition of
heat, as stated in the text, includes no laws of phenomena, explains no
process, and is indeed itself an example of illicit generalization.
In all the details of his example of heat he is unfortunate. He
includes in his collection of instances, the _hot_ tastes of aromatic
plants, the caustic effects of acids, and many other facts which
cannot be ascribed to heat without a studious laxity in the use of the
word. --_Ed. _
[107] By this term Bacon understands general phenomena, taken in order
from the great mass of indiscriminative facts, which, as they lie in
nature, are apt to generate confusion by their number, indistinctness
and complication. Such classes of phenomena, as being peculiarly
suggestive of causation, he quaintly classes under the title of
prerogative inquiries, either seduced by the fanciful analogy, which
such instances bore to the _prerogativa centuria_ in the Roman Comitia,
or justly considering them as Herschel supposes to hold a kind of
prerogative dignity from being peculiarly suggestive of causation.
Two high authorities in physical science (v. Herschel, Nat. Phil. ,
art. 192; Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii.
p. 243) pronounce these instances of little service in the task of
induction, being for the most part classed not according to the ideas
which they involve, or to any obvious circumstance in the facts of
which they consist, but according to the extent and manner of their
influence upon the inquiry in which they are employed. Thus we
have solitary instances, migrating instances, ostensive instances,
clandestine instances, so termed according to the degree in which
they exhibit, or seem to exhibit, the property, whose nature we would
examine. We have guide-post instances, crucial instances, instances of
the parted road, of the doorway, of the lamp, according to the guidance
they supply to our advance. Whewell remarks that such a classification
is much of the same nature as if, having to teach the art of building,
we were to describe tools with reference to the amount and place of the
work which they must do, instead of pointing out their construction
and use; as if we were to inform the pupil that we must have tools for
lifting a stone up, tools for moving it sidewise, tools for laying it
square, and tools for cementing it firmly. The means are thus lost
in the end, and we reap the fruits of unmethodical arrangement in
the confusion of cross division. In addition, all the instances are
leavened with the error of confounding the laws with the causes of
phenomena, and we are urged to adopt the fundamental error of seeking
therein the universal agents, or general causes of phenomena, without
ascending the gradual steps of intermediate laws. --_Ed. _
[108] Of these nine general heads no more than the first is prosecuted
by the author.
[109] This very nearly approaches to Sir I. Newton’s discovery of the
decomposition of light by the prism.
[110] The mineral kingdom, as displaying the same nature in all its
gradations, from the shells so perfect in structure in limestone to the
finer marbles in which their nature gradually disappears, is the great
theatre for instances of migration. --_Ed. _
[111] Bacon was not aware of the fact since brought to light by
Römer, that down to fourteen fathoms from the earth’s mean level
the thermometer remains fixed at the tenth degree, but that as the
thermometer descends below that depth the heat increases in a ratio
proportionate to the descent, which happens with little variation in
all climates. Buffon considers this a proof of a central fire in our
planet. --_Ed. _
[112] All the diversities of bodies depend upon two principles, _i. e. _,
the quantity and the position of the elements that enter into their
composition. The primary difference is not that which depends on the
greatest or least quantity of material elements, but that which depends
on their position. It was the quick perception of this truth that made
Leibnitz say that to complete mathematics it was necessary to join to
the analysis of quantity the analysis of position. --_Ed. _
[113] Query?
[114] The real cause of this phenomenon is the attraction of the
surface-water in the vessel by the sides of the bubbles. When the
bubbles approach, the sides nearest each other both tend to raise the
small space of water between them, and consequently less water is
raised by each of these nearer sides than by the exterior part of the
bubble, and the greater weight of the water raised on the exterior
parts pushes the bubbles together. In the same manner a bubble near
the side of a vessel is pushed toward it; the vessel and bubble both
drawing the water that is between them. The latter phenomenon cannot be
explained on Bacon’s hypothesis.
[115] Modern discoveries appear to bear out the sagacity of Bacon’s
remark, and the experiments of Baron Cagnard may be regarded as a first
step toward its full demonstration. After the new facts elicited by
that philosopher, there can be little doubt that the solid, liquid
and aëriform state of bodies are merely stages in a progress of
gradual transition from one extreme to the other, and that however
strongly marked the distinctions between them may appear, they will
ultimately turn out to be separated by no sudden or violent line of
demarcation, but slide into each other by imperceptible gradations.
Bacon’s suggestion, however, is as old as Pythagoras, and perhaps
simultaneous with the first dawn of philosophic reason. The doctrine of
the reciprocal transmutation of the elements underlies all the physical
systems of the ancients, and was adopted by the Epicureans as well as
the Stoics. Ovid opens his last book of the Metamorphoses with the
poetry of the subject, where he expressly points to the hint of Bacon:--
----“Tenuatus in auras
Aëraque humor abit, etc. , etc.
* * * * * *
Inde retro redeunt, idemque retexitur ordo. ”--xv. 246–249.
and Seneca, in the third book of his Natural Philosophy, quest. iv. ,
states the opinion in more precise language than either the ancient
bard or the modern philosopher. --_Ed. _
[116] The author’s own system of Memoria Technica may be found in
the De Augmentis, chap. xv. We may add that, notwithstanding Bacon’s
assertion that he intended his method to apply to religion, politics,
and morals, this is the only lengthy illustration he has adduced of any
subject out of the domain of physical science. --_Ed. _
[117] The collective instances here meant are no other than general
facts or laws of some degree of generality, and are themselves the
result of induction. For example, the system of Jupiter, or Saturn
with its satellites, is a collective instance, and materially assisted
in securing the admission of the Copernican system. We have here in
miniature, and displayed at one view, a system analogous to that of the
planets about the sun, of which, from the circumstance of our being
involved in it, and unfavorably situated for seeing it otherwise than
in detail, we are incapacitated from forming a general idea, but by
slow and progressive efforts of reason.
But there is a species of collective instance which Bacon does not seem
to have contemplated, in which particular phenomena are presented in
such numbers at once, as to make the induction of their law a matter
of ocular inspection. For example, the parabolic form assumed by a
jet of water spouted out of a hole is a collective instance of the
velocities and directions of the motions of all the particles which
compose it seen together, and which thus leads us without trouble to
recognize the law of the motion of a projectile. Again, the beautiful
figures exhibited by sand strewed on regular plates of glass or metal
set in vibration, are collective instances of an infinite number of
points which remain at rest while the remainder of the plate vibrates,
and in consequence afford us an insight into the law which regulates
their arrangement and sequence throughout the whole surface. The richly
colored lemniscates seen around the optic axis of crystals exposed to
polarized light afford a striking instance of the same kind, pointing
at once to the general mathematical expression of the law which
regulates their production. Such collective instances as these lead us
to a general law by an induction which offers itself spontaneously,
and thus furnish advanced posts in philosophical exploration. The laws
of Kepler, which Bacon ignored on account of his want of mathematical
taste, may be cited as a collective instance. The first is, that the
planets move in elliptical orbits, having the sun for their common
focus. The second, that about this focus the _radius vector_ of each
planet describes equal areas in equal times. The third, that the
squares of the periodic times of the planets are as the cubes of their
mean distance from the sun. This collective instance “opened the way”
to the discovery of the Newtonian law of gravitation. --_Ed. _
[118] Is not this very hasty generalization? Do serpents move with four
folds only? Observe also the motion of centipedes and other insects.
[119] Shaw states another point of difference between the objects cited
in the text--animals having their roots within, while plants have
theirs without; for their lacteals nearly correspond with the fibres of
the roots in plants; so that animals seem nourished within themselves
as plants are without. --_Ed. _
[120] Bacon falls into an error here in regarding the syllogism as
something distinct from the reasoning faculty, and only one of its
forms. It is not generally true that the syllogism is only a form of
reasoning by which we unite ideas which accord with the middle term.
This agreement is not even essential to accurate syllogisms; when the
relation of the two things compared to the third is one of equality or
similitude, it of course follows that the two things compared may be
pronounced equal, or like to each other. But if the relation between
these terms exist in a different form, then it is not true that the
two extremes stand in the same relation to each other as to the middle
term. For instance, if =A= is double of =B=, and =B= double of =C=,
then =A= is quadruple of =C=. But then the relation of =A= to =C= is
different from that of =A= to =B= and of =B= to =C=. --_Ed. _
[121] Comparative anatomy is full of analogies of this kind. Those
between natural and artificial productions are well worthy of
attention, and sometimes lead to important discoveries. By observing
an analogy of this kind between the plan used in hydraulic engines for
preventing the counter-current of a fluid, and a similar contrivance in
the blood vessels, Harvey was led to the discovery of the circulation
of the blood. --_Ed. _
[122] This is well illustrated in plants, for the gardener can produce
endless varieties of any known species, but can never produce a new
species itself.
[123] The discoveries of Tournefort have placed moss in the class
of plants. The fish alluded to below are to be found only in the
tropics. --_Ed. _
[124] There is, however, no real approximation to birds in either the
flying fish or bat, any more than a man approximates to a fish because
he can swim. The wings of the flying fish and bat are mere expansions
of skin, bearing no resemblance whatever to those of birds. --_Ed. _
[125] Seneca was a sounder astronomer than Bacon. He ridiculed the idea
of the motion of any heavenly bodies being irregular, and predicted
that the day would come, when the laws which guided the revolution
of these bodies would be proved to be identical with those which
controlled the motions of the planets. The anticipation, was realized
by Newton. --_Ed. _
[126] But see Bacon’s own corollary at the end of the Instances of
Divorce, Aphorism xxxvii. If Bacon’s remark be accepted, the censure
will fall upon Newton and the system so generally received at the
present day. It is, however, unjust, as the centre of which Newton so
often speaks is not a point with an active inherent force, but only
the result of all the particular and reciprocal attractions of the
different parts of the planet acting upon one spot. It is evident, that
if all these forces were united in this centre, that the sum would be
equal to all their partial effects. --_Ed. _
[127] Since Newton’s discovery of the law of gravitation, we find that
the attractive force of the earth must extend to an infinite distance.
Bacon himself alludes to the operation of this attractive force at
great distances in the Instances of the Rod, Aphorism xlv.
[128] Snow reflects light, but is not a source of light.
[129] Bacon’s sagacity here foreshadows Newton’s theory of the tides.
[130] The error in the text arose from Bacon’s impression that
the earth was immovable. It is evident, since gravitation acts at
an infinite distance, that no such point could be found; and even
supposing the impossible point of equilibrium discovered, the body
could not maintain its position an instant, but would be hurried, at
the first movement of the heavenly bodies, in the direction of the
dominant gravitating power. --_Ed. _
[131] Fly clocks are referred to in the text, not pendulum clocks,
which were not known in England till 1662. The former, though clumsy
and rude in their construction, still embodied sound mechanical
principles. The comparison of the effect of a spring with that of a
weight in producing certain motions in certain times on altitudes and
in mines, has recently been tried by Professors Airy and Whewell in
Dalcoath mine, by means of a pendulum, which is only a weight moved by
gravity, and a chronometer balance moved and regulated by a spring.
In his thirty-seventh Aphorism, Bacon also speaks of gravity as an
incorporeal power, acting at a distance, and requiring time for its
transmission; a consideration which occurred at a later period to
Laplace in one of his most delicate investigations.
Crucial instances, as Herschel remarks, afford the readiest and
securest means of eliminating extraneous causes, and deciding between
the claims of rival hypotheses; especially when these, running parallel
to each other, in the explanation of great classes of phenomena, at
length come to be placed at issue upon a single fact. A curious example
is given by M. Fresnel, as decisive in his mind of the question between
the two great theories on the nature of light, which, since the time
of Newton and Huyghens, have divided philosophers. When two very clean
glasses are laid one on the other, if they be not perfectly flat, but
one or both, in an almost imperceptible degree, convex or prominent,
beautiful and vivid colors will be seen between them; and if these be
viewed through a red glass, their appearance will be that of alternate
dark and bright stripes. These stripes are formed between the two
surfaces in apparent contact, and being applicable on both theories,
are appealed to by their respective supporters as strong confirmatory
facts; but there is a difference in one circumstance, according as
one or other theory is employed to explain them. In the case of the
Huyghenian theory, the intervals between the bright stripes ought to
appear absolutely black, when a prism is used for the upper glass, in
the other half bright. This curious case of difference was tried, as
soon as the opposing consequences of the two theories were noted by
M. Fresnel, and the result is stated by him to be decisive in favor
of that theory which makes light to consist in the vibrations of an
elastic medium. --_Ed. _
[132] Bacon plainly, from this passage, was inclined to believe that
the moon, like the comets, was nothing more than illuminated vapor. The
Newtonian law, however, has not only established its solidity, but its
density and weight. A sufficient proof of the former is afforded by the
attraction of the sea, and the moon’s motion round the earth. --_Ed. _
[133] Rather the refraction; the sky or air, however, _reflects_ the
blue rays of light.
[134] The polished surface of the glass causes the reflection in this
case, and not the air; and a hat or other black surface put behind the
window in the daytime will enable the glass to reflect distinctly for
the same reason, namely, that the reflected rays are not mixed and
confused with those transmitted from the other side of the window.
[135] These instances, which Bacon seems to consider as a great
discovery, are nothing more than disjunctive propositions combined
with dilemmas. In proposing to explain an effect, we commence with
the enumeration of the different causes which seem connected with
its production; then with the aid of one or more dilemmas, we
eliminate each of the phenomena accidental to its composition, and
conclude with attributing the effect to the residue. For instance, a
certain phenomenon (_a_) is produced either by phenomenon (=B=) or
phenomenon (=C=); but =C= cannot be the cause of _a_, for it is found
in =D=, =E=, =F=, neither of which are connected with _a_. Then the
true cause of phenomenon (_a_) must be phenomenon (=B=).
This species of reasoning is liable to several paralogisms, against
which Bacon has not guarded his readers, from the very fact that he
stumbled into them unwittingly himself. The two principal ones are
false exclusions and defective enumerations. Bacon, in his survey of
the causes which are able to concur in producing the phenomena of the
tides, takes no account of the periodic melting of the Polar ice, or
the expansion of water by the solar heat; nor does he fare better in
his exclusions. For the attraction of the planets and the progression
and retrograde motion communicated by the earth’s diurnal revolution,
can plainly affect the sea together, and have a simultaneous influence
on its surface.
Bacon is hardly just or consistent in his censure of Ramus; the end of
whose dichotomy was only to render reasoning by dilemma, and crucial
instances, more certain in their results, by reducing the divisions
which composed their parts to two sets of contradictory propositions.
The affirmative or negative of one would then necessarily have led to
the acceptance or rejection of the other. --_Ed. _
[136] Père Shenier first pointed out the spots on the sun’s disk, and
by the marks which they afforded him, computed its revolution to be
performed in twenty-five days and some hours. --_Ed. _
[137] Rust is now well known to be a chemical combination of oxygen
with the metal, and the metal when rusty acquires additional weight.
His theory as to the generation of animals, is deduced from the
erroneous notion of the possibility of spontaneous generation (as it
was termed). See the next paragraph but one.
[138]
“Limus ut hic durescit, et hæc ut cera liquescit
Uno eodemque igni. ”--Virg. Ecl. viii.
[139] See Table of Degrees, No. 38.
[140] Riccati, and all modern physicists, discover some portion of
light in every body, which seems to confirm the passage in Genesis that
assigns to this substance priority in creation. --_Ed. _
[141] As instances of this kind, which the progress of science since
the time of Bacon affords, we may cite the air-pump and the barometer,
for manifesting the weight and elasticity of air: the measurement
of the velocity of light, by means of the occultation of Jupiter’s
satellites and the aberration of the fixed stars: the experiments
in electricity and galvanism, and in the greater part of pneumatic
chemistry. In all these cases scientific facts are elicited, which
sense could never have revealed to us. --_Ed. _
[142] The itinerant instances, as well as frontier instances, are
cases in which we are enabled to trace the general law of continuity
which seems to pervade all nature, and which has been aptly embodied
in the sentence, “natura non agit per saltum. ” The pursuit of this law
into phenomena where its application is not at first sight obvious,
has opened a mine of physical discovery, and led us to perceive an
intimate connection between facts which at first seemed hostile to each
other. For example, the transparency of gold-leaf, which permits a
bluish-green light to pass through it, is a frontier instance between
transparent and opaque bodies, by exhibiting a body of the glass
generally regarded the most opaque in nature, as still possessed of
some slight degree of transparency. It thus proves that the quality
of opacity is not a contrary or antagonistic quality to that of
transparency, but only its extreme lowest degree.
[143] Alluding to his theory of atoms.
[144] Observe the approximation to Newton’s theory. The same notion
repeated still more clearly in the ninth motion. Newton believed
that the planets might so conspire as to derange the earth’s annual
revolution, and to elongate the line of the apsides and ellipsis that
the earth describes in its annual revolution round the sun. In the
supposition that all the planets meet on the same straight line, Venus
and Mercury on one side of the sun, and the earth, moon, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn on the side diametrically opposite; then Saturn would
attract Jupiter, Jupiter Mars, Mars the moon, which must in its turn
attract the earth in proportion to the force with which it was drawn
out of its orbit. The result of this combined action on our planet
would elongate its ecliptic orbit, and so far draw it from the source
of heat, as to produce an intensity of cold destructive to animal
life. But this movement would immediately cease with the planetary
concurrence which produced it, and the earth, like a compressed spring,
bound almost as near to the sun as she had been drawn from it, the
reaction of the heat on its surface being about as intense as the cold
caused by the first removal was severe. The earth, until it gained its
regular track, would thus alternately vibrate between each side of
its orbit, with successive changes in its atmosphere, proportional to
the square of the variation of its distance from the sun. In no place
is Bacon’s genius more conspicuous than in these repeated guesses at
truth. He would have been a strong Copernican, had not Gilbert defended
the system. --_Ed. _
[145] This is not true except when the projectile acquires greater
velocity at every successive instant of its course, which is never
the case except with falling bodies. Bacon appears to have been led
into the opinion from observing that gunshots pierce many objects
at a distance from which they rebound when brought within a certain
proximity of contact. This apparent inconsistency, however, arises from
the resistance of the parts of the object, which velocity combined with
force is necessary to overcome. --_Ed. _
[146] This passage shows that the pressure of the external atmosphere,
which forces the water into the egg, was not in Bacon’s time
understood. --_Ed. _
[147] We have already alluded, in a note prefixed to the same aphorism
of the first book, to Newton’s error of the absolute lightness of
bodies. In speaking again of the volatile or spiritual substances
(Aph. xl. b. ii. ) which he supposed with the Platonists and some of the
schoolmen to enter into the composition of every body, he ascribes to
them a power of lessening the weight of the material coating in which
he supposes them inclosed. It would appear from these passages and the
text that Bacon had no idea of the relative density of bodies, and the
capability which some have to diminish the specific gravity of the
heavier substances by the dilation of their parts; or if he had, the
reveries in which Aristotle indulged in treating of the soul, about the
appetency of bodies to fly to kindred substances--flame and spirit to
the sky, and solid opaque substances to the earth, must have vitiated
his mind. --_Ed. _
[148] Römer, a Danish astronomer, was the first to demonstrate, by
connecting the irregularities of the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites
with their distances from the earth, the necessity of time for the
propagation of light. The idea occurred to Dominic Cassini as well as
Bacon, but both allowed the discovery to slip out of their hands. --_Ed. _
[149] The author in the text confounds inertness, which is a simple
indifference of bodies to action, with gravity, which is a force acting
always in proportion to their density. He falls into the same error
further on. --_Ed. _
[150] The experiments of the last two classes of instances are
considered only in relation to practice, and Bacon does not so much as
mention their infinitely greater importance in the theoretical part of
induction. The important law of gravitation in physical astronomy could
never have been demonstrated but by such observations and experiments
as assigned accurate geometrical measures to the quantities compared.
It was necessary to determine with precision the demi-diameter of the
earth, the velocity of falling bodies at its surface, the distance of
the moon, and the speed with which she describes her orbit, before the
relation could be discovered between the force which draws a stone to
the ground and that which retains the moon in her sphere.
In many cases the result of a number of particular facts, or the
collective instances rising out of them, can only be discovered by
geometry, which so far becomes necessary to complete the work of
induction. For instance, in the case of optics, when light passes from
one transparent medium to another, it is refracted, and the angle
which the ray of incidence makes with the superficies which bounds the
two media determines that which the refracted ray makes with the same
superficies. Now, all experiment can do for us in this case is, to
determine for any particular angle of incidence the corresponding angle
of refraction. But with respect to the general rule which in every
possible case deduces one of these angles from the other, or expresses
the constant and invariable relation which subsists between them,
experiment gives no direct information. Geometry must, consequently,
be called in, which, when a constant though unknown relation subsists
between two angles, or two variable qualities of any kind, and when
an indefinite number of values of those quantities are assigned,
furnishes infallible means of discovering that unknown relation either
accurately or by approximation. In this way it has been found, when
the two media remain the same, the cosines of the above-mentioned
angles have a constant ratio to each other. Hence, when the relations
of the simple elements of phenomena are discovered to afford a general
rule which will apply to any concrete case, the deductive method must
be applied, and the elementary principles made through its agency to
account for the laws of their more complex combinations. The reflection
and refraction of light by the rain falling from a cloud opposite to
the sun was thought, even before Newton’s day, to contain the _form_ of
the rainbow.
