If Bacon’s remark be accepted, the censure
will fall upon Newton and the system so generally received at the
present day.
will fall upon Newton and the system so generally received at the
present day.
Bacon
_
[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. This philosopher transformed a probable conjecture into
a certain fact when he deduced from the known laws of reflection and
refraction the breadth of the colored arch, the diameter of the circle
of which it is a part, and the relation of the latter to the place
of the spectator and the sun. Doubt was at once silenced when there
came out of his calculus a combination of the same laws of the simple
elements of optics answering to the phenomena in nature. --_Ed. _
[151] As far as this motion results from attraction and repulsion, it
is only a simple consequence of the last two. --_Ed. _
[152] These two cases are now resolved into the property of the
capillary tubes and present only another feature of the law of
attraction. --_Ed. _
[153] This is one of the most useful practical methods in chemistry at
the present day.
[154] See Aphorism xxv.
[155] Query?
[156] Observe this approximation to Newton’s theory.
[157] Those differences which are generated by the masses and
respective distances of bodies are only differences of quantity, and
not specific; consequently those three classes are only one. --_Ed. _
[158] See the citing instances, Aphorism xl.
[159] Aristotle’s doctrine, that sound takes place when bodies
strike the air, which the modern science of acoustics has completely
established, was rejected by Bacon in a treatise upon the same subject:
“The collision or thrusting of air,” he says, “which they will have to
be the cause of sound, neither denotes the form nor the latent process
of sound, but is a term of ignorance and of superficial contemplation. ”
To get out of the difficulty, he betook himself to his theory of
spirits, a species of phenomena which he constantly introduces to give
himself the air of explaining things he could not understand, or would
not admit upon the hypothesis of his opponents. --_Ed. _
[160] The motion of trepidation, as Bacon calls it, was attributed
by the ancient astronomers to the eight spheres, relative to the
precession of the equinoxes. Galileo was the first to observe this kind
of lunar motion. --_Ed. _
[161] Part of the air is expanded and escapes, and part is consumed
by the flame. When condensed, therefore, by the cold application,
it cannot offer sufficient resistance to the external atmosphere to
prevent the liquid or flesh from being forced into the glass.
[162] Heat can now be abstracted by a very simple process, till the
degree of cold be of almost any required intensity. --_Ed. _
[163] It is impossible to compare a degree of heat with a degree of
cold, without the assumption of some arbitrary test, to which the
degrees are to be referred. In the next sentence Bacon appears to have
taken the power of animal life to support heat or cold as the test, and
then the comparison can only be between the degree of heat or of cold
that will produce death.
The zero must be arbitrary which divides equally a certain degree of
heat from a certain degree of cold. --_Ed. _
[164] It may often be observed on the leaves of the lime and other
trees.
THE
ADVANCEMENT
OF
LEARNING.
BY
FRANCIS BACON.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
1893.
INTRODUCTION.
“THE TVVOO Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduancement
of Learning, divine and humane. To the King. At London. Printed for
Henrie Tomes, and are to be sould at his shop at Graies Inne Gate in
Holborne. 1605. ” That was the original title-page of the book now in
the reader’s hand—a living book that led the way to a new world of
thought. It was the book in which Bacon, early in the reign of James the
First, prepared the way for a full setting forth of his New Organon, or
instrument of knowledge.
The Organon of Aristotle was a set of treatises in which Aristotle had
written the doctrine of propositions. Study of these treatises was a
chief occupation of young men when they passed from school to college,
and proceeded from Grammar to Logic, the second of the Seven Sciences.
Francis Bacon as a youth of sixteen, at Trinity College, Cambridge, felt
the unfruitfulness of this method of search after truth. He was the son
of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Keeper, and was born at
York House, in the Strand, on the 22nd of January, 1561. His mother was
the Lord Keeper’s second wife, one of two sisters, of whom the other
married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. Sir Nicholas Bacon
had six children by his former marriage, and by his second wife two sons,
Antony and Francis, of whom Antony was about two years the elder. The
family home was at York Place, and at Gorhambury, near St. Albans, from
which town, in its ancient and its modern style, Bacon afterwards took
his titles of Verulam and St. Albans.
Antony and Francis Bacon went together to Trinity College, Cambridge,
when Antony was fourteen years old and Francis twelve. Francis remained
at Cambridge only until his sixteenth year; and Dr. Rawley, his chaplain
in after-years, reports of him that “whilst he was commorant in the
University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased
to impart unto myself), he first fell into dislike of the philosophy of
Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would
ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way, being
a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputatious
and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of
the life of man; in which mind he continued to his dying day. ” Bacon was
sent as a youth of sixteen to Paris with the ambassador Sir Amyas Paulet,
to begin his training for the public service; but his father’s death, in
February, 1579, before he had completed the provision he was making for
his youngest children, obliged him to return to London, and, at the age
of eighteen, to settle down at Gray’s Inn to the study of law as a
profession. He was admitted to the outer bar in June, 1582, and about
that time, at the age of twenty-one, wrote a sketch of his conception of
a New Organon that should lead man to more fruitful knowledge, in a
little Latin tract, which he called “Temporis Partus Maximus” (“The
Greatest Birth of Time”).
In November, 1584, Bacon took his seat in the House of Commons as member
for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In October, 1586, he sat for
Taunton. He was member afterwards for Liverpool; and he was one of those
who petitioned for the speedy execution of Mary Queen of Scots. In
October, 1589, he obtained the reversion of the office of Clerk of the
Council in the Star Chamber, which was worth £1,600 or £2,000 a year; but
for the succession to this office he had to wait until 1608. It had not
yet fallen to him when he wrote his “Two Books of the Advancement of
Learning. ” In the Parliament that met in February, 1593, Bacon sat as
member for Middlesex. He raised difficulties of procedure in the way of
the grant of a treble subsidy, by just objection to the joining of the
Lords with the Commons in a money grant, and a desire to extend the time
allowed for payment from three years to six; it was, in fact, extended to
four years. The Queen was offended. Francis Bacon and his brother
Antony had attached themselves to the young Earl of Essex, who was their
friend and patron. The office of Attorney-General became vacant. Essex
asked the Queen to appoint Francis Bacon. The Queen gave the office to
Sir Edward Coke, who was already Solicitor-General, and by nine years
Bacon’s senior. The office of Solicitor-General thus became vacant, and
that was sought for Francis Bacon. The Queen, after delay and
hesitation, gave it, in November, 1595, to Serjeant Fleming. The Earl of
Essex consoled his friend by giving him “a piece of land”—Twickenham
Park—which Bacon afterwards sold for £1,800—equal, say, to £12,000 in
present buying power. In 1597 Bacon was returned to Parliament as member
for Ipswich, and in that year he was hoping to marry the rich widow of
Sir William Hatton, Essex helping; but the lady married, in the next
year, Sir Edward Coke. It was in 1597 that Bacon published the First
Edition of his Essays. That was a little book containing only ten essays
in English, with twelve “Meditationes Sacræ,” which were essays in Latin
on religious subjects. From 1597 onward to the end of his life, Bacon’s
Essays were subject to continuous addition and revision. The author’s
Second Edition, in which the number of the Essays was increased from ten
to thirty-eight, did not appear until November or December, 1612, seven
years later than these two books on the “Advancement of Learning;” and
the final edition of the Essays, in which their number was increased from
thirty-eight to fifty-eight, appeared only in 1625; and Bacon died on the
9th of April, 1626. The edition of the Essays published in 1597, under
Elizabeth, marked only the beginning of a course of thought that
afterwards flowed in one stream with his teachings in philosophy.
In February, 1601, there was the rebellion of Essex. Francis Bacon had
separated himself from his patron after giving him advice that was
disregarded. Bacon, now Queen’s Counsel, not only appeared against his
old friend, but with excess of zeal, by which, perhaps, he hoped to win
back the Queen’s favour, he twice obtruded violent attacks upon Essex
when he was not called upon to speak. On the 25th of February, 1601,
Essex was beheaded. The genius of Bacon was next employed to justify
that act by “A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and
committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his Complices. ” But James of
Scotland, on whose behalf Essex had intervened, came to the throne by the
death of Elizabeth on the 24th of March, 1603. Bacon was among the crowd
of men who were made knights by James I. , and he had to justify himself
under the new order of things by writing “Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie
in certain Imputations concerning the late Earle of Essex. ” He was
returned to the first Parliament of James I. by Ipswich and St. Albans,
and he was confirmed in his office of King’s Counsel in August, 1604; but
he was not appointed to the office of Solicitor-General when it became
vacant in that year.
That was the position of Francis Bacon in 1605, when he published this
work, where in his First Book he pointed out the discredits of learning
from human defects of the learned, and emptiness of many of the studies
chosen, or the way of dealing with them. This came, he said, especially
by the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge,
as if there were sought in it “a couch whereupon to rest a searching and
restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk
up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to
raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and
contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for
the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate. ” The rest of
the First Book was given to an argument upon the Dignity of Learning; and
the Second Book, on the Advancement of Learning, is, as Bacon himself
described it, “a general and faithful perambulation of learning, with an
inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste, and not improved and
converted by the industry of man; to the end that such a plot made and
recorded to memory may both minister light to any public designation and
also serve to excite voluntary endeavours. ” Bacon makes, by a sort of
exhaustive analysis, a ground-plan of all subjects of study, as an
intellectual map, helping the right inquirer in his search for the right
path. The right path is that by which he has the best chance of adding
to the stock of knowledge in the world something worth labouring for; and
the true worth is in labour for “the glory of the Creator and the relief
of man’s estate. ”
H. M.
THE
FIRST BOOK OF FRANCIS BACON;
OF THE PROFICIENCE AND
ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING,
DIVINE AND HUMAN.
_To the King_.
THERE were under the law, excellent King, both daily sacrifices and
freewill offerings; the one proceeding upon ordinary observance, the
other upon a devout cheerfulness: in like manner there belongeth to kings
from their servants both tribute of duty and presents of affection.
[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. This philosopher transformed a probable conjecture into
a certain fact when he deduced from the known laws of reflection and
refraction the breadth of the colored arch, the diameter of the circle
of which it is a part, and the relation of the latter to the place
of the spectator and the sun. Doubt was at once silenced when there
came out of his calculus a combination of the same laws of the simple
elements of optics answering to the phenomena in nature. --_Ed. _
[151] As far as this motion results from attraction and repulsion, it
is only a simple consequence of the last two. --_Ed. _
[152] These two cases are now resolved into the property of the
capillary tubes and present only another feature of the law of
attraction. --_Ed. _
[153] This is one of the most useful practical methods in chemistry at
the present day.
[154] See Aphorism xxv.
[155] Query?
[156] Observe this approximation to Newton’s theory.
[157] Those differences which are generated by the masses and
respective distances of bodies are only differences of quantity, and
not specific; consequently those three classes are only one. --_Ed. _
[158] See the citing instances, Aphorism xl.
[159] Aristotle’s doctrine, that sound takes place when bodies
strike the air, which the modern science of acoustics has completely
established, was rejected by Bacon in a treatise upon the same subject:
“The collision or thrusting of air,” he says, “which they will have to
be the cause of sound, neither denotes the form nor the latent process
of sound, but is a term of ignorance and of superficial contemplation. ”
To get out of the difficulty, he betook himself to his theory of
spirits, a species of phenomena which he constantly introduces to give
himself the air of explaining things he could not understand, or would
not admit upon the hypothesis of his opponents. --_Ed. _
[160] The motion of trepidation, as Bacon calls it, was attributed
by the ancient astronomers to the eight spheres, relative to the
precession of the equinoxes. Galileo was the first to observe this kind
of lunar motion. --_Ed. _
[161] Part of the air is expanded and escapes, and part is consumed
by the flame. When condensed, therefore, by the cold application,
it cannot offer sufficient resistance to the external atmosphere to
prevent the liquid or flesh from being forced into the glass.
[162] Heat can now be abstracted by a very simple process, till the
degree of cold be of almost any required intensity. --_Ed. _
[163] It is impossible to compare a degree of heat with a degree of
cold, without the assumption of some arbitrary test, to which the
degrees are to be referred. In the next sentence Bacon appears to have
taken the power of animal life to support heat or cold as the test, and
then the comparison can only be between the degree of heat or of cold
that will produce death.
The zero must be arbitrary which divides equally a certain degree of
heat from a certain degree of cold. --_Ed. _
[164] It may often be observed on the leaves of the lime and other
trees.
THE
ADVANCEMENT
OF
LEARNING.
BY
FRANCIS BACON.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
1893.
INTRODUCTION.
“THE TVVOO Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduancement
of Learning, divine and humane. To the King. At London. Printed for
Henrie Tomes, and are to be sould at his shop at Graies Inne Gate in
Holborne. 1605. ” That was the original title-page of the book now in
the reader’s hand—a living book that led the way to a new world of
thought. It was the book in which Bacon, early in the reign of James the
First, prepared the way for a full setting forth of his New Organon, or
instrument of knowledge.
The Organon of Aristotle was a set of treatises in which Aristotle had
written the doctrine of propositions. Study of these treatises was a
chief occupation of young men when they passed from school to college,
and proceeded from Grammar to Logic, the second of the Seven Sciences.
Francis Bacon as a youth of sixteen, at Trinity College, Cambridge, felt
the unfruitfulness of this method of search after truth. He was the son
of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth’s Lord Keeper, and was born at
York House, in the Strand, on the 22nd of January, 1561. His mother was
the Lord Keeper’s second wife, one of two sisters, of whom the other
married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. Sir Nicholas Bacon
had six children by his former marriage, and by his second wife two sons,
Antony and Francis, of whom Antony was about two years the elder. The
family home was at York Place, and at Gorhambury, near St. Albans, from
which town, in its ancient and its modern style, Bacon afterwards took
his titles of Verulam and St. Albans.
Antony and Francis Bacon went together to Trinity College, Cambridge,
when Antony was fourteen years old and Francis twelve. Francis remained
at Cambridge only until his sixteenth year; and Dr. Rawley, his chaplain
in after-years, reports of him that “whilst he was commorant in the
University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased
to impart unto myself), he first fell into dislike of the philosophy of
Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would
ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way, being
a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputatious
and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of
the life of man; in which mind he continued to his dying day. ” Bacon was
sent as a youth of sixteen to Paris with the ambassador Sir Amyas Paulet,
to begin his training for the public service; but his father’s death, in
February, 1579, before he had completed the provision he was making for
his youngest children, obliged him to return to London, and, at the age
of eighteen, to settle down at Gray’s Inn to the study of law as a
profession. He was admitted to the outer bar in June, 1582, and about
that time, at the age of twenty-one, wrote a sketch of his conception of
a New Organon that should lead man to more fruitful knowledge, in a
little Latin tract, which he called “Temporis Partus Maximus” (“The
Greatest Birth of Time”).
In November, 1584, Bacon took his seat in the House of Commons as member
for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In October, 1586, he sat for
Taunton. He was member afterwards for Liverpool; and he was one of those
who petitioned for the speedy execution of Mary Queen of Scots. In
October, 1589, he obtained the reversion of the office of Clerk of the
Council in the Star Chamber, which was worth £1,600 or £2,000 a year; but
for the succession to this office he had to wait until 1608. It had not
yet fallen to him when he wrote his “Two Books of the Advancement of
Learning. ” In the Parliament that met in February, 1593, Bacon sat as
member for Middlesex. He raised difficulties of procedure in the way of
the grant of a treble subsidy, by just objection to the joining of the
Lords with the Commons in a money grant, and a desire to extend the time
allowed for payment from three years to six; it was, in fact, extended to
four years. The Queen was offended. Francis Bacon and his brother
Antony had attached themselves to the young Earl of Essex, who was their
friend and patron. The office of Attorney-General became vacant. Essex
asked the Queen to appoint Francis Bacon. The Queen gave the office to
Sir Edward Coke, who was already Solicitor-General, and by nine years
Bacon’s senior. The office of Solicitor-General thus became vacant, and
that was sought for Francis Bacon. The Queen, after delay and
hesitation, gave it, in November, 1595, to Serjeant Fleming. The Earl of
Essex consoled his friend by giving him “a piece of land”—Twickenham
Park—which Bacon afterwards sold for £1,800—equal, say, to £12,000 in
present buying power. In 1597 Bacon was returned to Parliament as member
for Ipswich, and in that year he was hoping to marry the rich widow of
Sir William Hatton, Essex helping; but the lady married, in the next
year, Sir Edward Coke. It was in 1597 that Bacon published the First
Edition of his Essays. That was a little book containing only ten essays
in English, with twelve “Meditationes Sacræ,” which were essays in Latin
on religious subjects. From 1597 onward to the end of his life, Bacon’s
Essays were subject to continuous addition and revision. The author’s
Second Edition, in which the number of the Essays was increased from ten
to thirty-eight, did not appear until November or December, 1612, seven
years later than these two books on the “Advancement of Learning;” and
the final edition of the Essays, in which their number was increased from
thirty-eight to fifty-eight, appeared only in 1625; and Bacon died on the
9th of April, 1626. The edition of the Essays published in 1597, under
Elizabeth, marked only the beginning of a course of thought that
afterwards flowed in one stream with his teachings in philosophy.
In February, 1601, there was the rebellion of Essex. Francis Bacon had
separated himself from his patron after giving him advice that was
disregarded. Bacon, now Queen’s Counsel, not only appeared against his
old friend, but with excess of zeal, by which, perhaps, he hoped to win
back the Queen’s favour, he twice obtruded violent attacks upon Essex
when he was not called upon to speak. On the 25th of February, 1601,
Essex was beheaded. The genius of Bacon was next employed to justify
that act by “A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and
committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his Complices. ” But James of
Scotland, on whose behalf Essex had intervened, came to the throne by the
death of Elizabeth on the 24th of March, 1603. Bacon was among the crowd
of men who were made knights by James I. , and he had to justify himself
under the new order of things by writing “Sir Francis Bacon his Apologie
in certain Imputations concerning the late Earle of Essex. ” He was
returned to the first Parliament of James I. by Ipswich and St. Albans,
and he was confirmed in his office of King’s Counsel in August, 1604; but
he was not appointed to the office of Solicitor-General when it became
vacant in that year.
That was the position of Francis Bacon in 1605, when he published this
work, where in his First Book he pointed out the discredits of learning
from human defects of the learned, and emptiness of many of the studies
chosen, or the way of dealing with them. This came, he said, especially
by the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge,
as if there were sought in it “a couch whereupon to rest a searching and
restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk
up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to
raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and
contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for
the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate. ” The rest of
the First Book was given to an argument upon the Dignity of Learning; and
the Second Book, on the Advancement of Learning, is, as Bacon himself
described it, “a general and faithful perambulation of learning, with an
inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste, and not improved and
converted by the industry of man; to the end that such a plot made and
recorded to memory may both minister light to any public designation and
also serve to excite voluntary endeavours. ” Bacon makes, by a sort of
exhaustive analysis, a ground-plan of all subjects of study, as an
intellectual map, helping the right inquirer in his search for the right
path. The right path is that by which he has the best chance of adding
to the stock of knowledge in the world something worth labouring for; and
the true worth is in labour for “the glory of the Creator and the relief
of man’s estate. ”
H. M.
THE
FIRST BOOK OF FRANCIS BACON;
OF THE PROFICIENCE AND
ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING,
DIVINE AND HUMAN.
_To the King_.
THERE were under the law, excellent King, both daily sacrifices and
freewill offerings; the one proceeding upon ordinary observance, the
other upon a devout cheerfulness: in like manner there belongeth to kings
from their servants both tribute of duty and presents of affection.
