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till Newton discovered the Law of Gravitation. The Ptolemaic

system itself, with its eccentrics and epicycles, was inconsistent with the strict Aristotelian Philosophy, which required all celestial motions to be simple and concentric; and it was therefore, by some philosophers, accepted only as a hypothesis, "saving the phenomena," while the more zealous Aristotelians rejected it with contempt.

Copernicus himself advocated his own system merely as a hypothesis; and in his works the term "Demonstrations" meant, not that certain causes did cause, but only that they could cause, certain phenomena. The introduction (erroneously attributed to Copernicus himself), which prefaces his great work on the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs says, "It is not necessary that hypotheses should be true or even probable; it is sufficient that they lead to results of calculation which agree with observations.

Neither let any one, so far as hypotheses are concerned, expect anything certain from Astronomy; since science can afford nothing of the kind." The obvious question, "Why should celestial bodies move in recurring orbits, and terrestrial bodies otherwise?" could not be answered by Copernicus. Nor could he answer another question of which any child could see the force : "If the earth is moving round at the rate of several hundred miles an hour eastward, how is it that a stone thrown straight up from the earth into the air does not fall down on the earth at a considerable distance westward of the spot where it left the earth?"-to which his only reply was that "perhaps the air carried the stone onward." The failure to answer these two questions condemned his astronomy as hypothetical. Hence Ramus, the logician, had (like Bacon) treated the Copernican system as a mere hypothesis, and had offered to resign his professorship in favour of any one who could produce an "astronomy without hypotheses;" and it is creditable to Bacon's faith in the uniformity of nature, that he predicted that future discoveries would rest upon observation of the common passions and desires of matter"-an anticipation of Newton's law of attraction.

But there is nothing Newtonian in the theory of his own, which he proceeds to elaborate. Making earth the centre of his system, he assumes that, the further one proceeds from earth, the more does the atmosphere become, not only rarified, but also adapted to be the home of the flamy substance of which the stars are supposed to consist. In the earthly atmosphere flame cannot exist without support; as we leave the earth, the air becomes rarer and flame acquires consistency, first in the comets, next in the body of the moon, where flame, though still weak, ceases to be extinguishable; thence, as we go still further, the flame increases in strength and purity until, in the planets Jupiter and Saturn, it begins to be exhausted by the proximity to the sidereal element.1 Finally, all planetary form is swallowed up in a region of unmixed flame. Thus there are three regions: 1st, the region of the extinction of flame; 2nd, the region of its union; 3rd, the region of its dispersion.

Next as to celestial motions. Since rest must not be taken out of nature, and since compactness of matter (such as we find in the terrene globe), induces aversion 2 to motion, it is reasonable to look for rest in the earth if anywhere. But if there is perfect rest, we must suppose there is also perfect mobility; and those bodies which are furthest from the earth will be most perfectly mobile. Accordingly, the further planets are from the earth, the more quickly they move (regard being had to the magnitude of their orbits); and whereas the orbits of the most remote approximate to circles, those of the nearest are spirals differing most from circles; "for in proportion as substances degenerate in purity and freedom of development, so do their motions degenerate." A protest follows against present astronomical systems: "As for the hypotheses of astronomers it is useless to refute them, because they are not themselves asserted as true; and they may be various and contrary one to the other, yet so as equally to save and adjust the phenomena." The treatise concludes thus: "These then are the things that I see, standing as I do on the threshold of natural history and philosophy; and it may be that, the deeper a man has gone into natural history, the more he will approve them."

The principal reason for disinterring these well-nigh forgotten 1 "In'Saturni autem regione rursus natura flammae videtur nonnihil languescere et hebescere; utpote et a solis auxiliis longius remota, et a coelo stellato in proximo exhausta." Spedding, Works, iii. 771.

2 The reader will not fail to notice how Bacon here and elsewhere succumbs to the power of words such as "appetite," "aversion," "nature" and the like-the very Idols against which he had so passionately protested.

treatises is because they illustrate in a very remarkable way the confidence which induced their Author, amid a multitude of engrossing occupations, to write in a tone of authority on a subject of which he himself knew so very little as not even to be able to appreciate the discoveries made by his contemporaries. During the rest of his life, immersed in State trials and attempts at politics, he was not destined to find leisure to supply his astronomical deficiencies; and accordingly we find that, the older he grew, the firmer became his conviction that the new belief in the rotation of the earth was false. In the treatise on the Flux and Reflux of the Sea, he merely notices the belief as "somewhat arbitrarily devised, so far as concerns physical reasons;" in the Thema Coeli (1612), he says that he now inclines to the theory of fixity ("which I now think to be the truer opinion"); but in the third book of the De Augmentis (1623), he is certain that the theory of the earth's motion is absolutely false (nobis constat falsissimum esse).1

At this point there is a great gap in the series of Bacon's Philosophical works. In 1613 he was appointed AttorneyGeneral, and from that time till 1620, the year before his downfall, no literary work of any kind published, or unpublished, is known to have issued from his pen. All that he did was apparently to re-write repeatedly and revise the Novum Organum, which now claims attention.

§ 53 THE "NOVUM ORGANUM" (BOOK I) 2

Fifteen years after the publication of the Advancement of Learning (which might serve as a first part of his Magna Instauratio) Bacon published (1620) the Key of the Interpretation of Nature, or, as he now preferred to call it, the Novum Organum (New Instrument), which was to serve as the second part of his great work.

1 In the Praise of Knowledge (1592) he perhaps condemns the Copernican theory: "Who would not smile at the astronomers, I mean not these new carmen which drive the earth about, but the ancient astronomers, which feign, &c.” (Spedding, i. 124); and in the Temporis Partus Masculus he includes the Copernicans in his general condemnation of astronomical hypotheses; "Seest thou not, my son, that alike these feigners of eccentrics and epicycles, and these carmen of the earth, delight in pleading the doubtful evidence of phenomena?" (Works, iii. 536).

Spedding, Works, i. 71-223.

He had been at work upon it for a long time, and his chaplain Rawley says that he had seen "at the least twelve copies revised year by year, one after another, and amended in the frame thereof." There is reason to suppose that Bacon is referring to an early draft of this work in the Commentarius Solutus (1608) when he speaks of "finishing the Aphorisms, Clavis Interpretationis, and then setting forth the book;" and, if so, Rawley's twelve copies, revised year by year, may just cover the period between 1608 and 1620, the date of publication. How very little was done in these twelve years, and how little the Novum Organum contains that is not also contained in Bacon's previous works will appear from the following summary.

The title-page contains the title Magna Instauratio (being intended as the title of the whole work, and not of the Novum Organum) and a picture of a ship passing safely between the two Pillars of Hercules, with the text, Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia 1-an allusion to Bacon's favourite comparison between the recent discovery of the new material world, and the anticipated discovery of a new intellectual world. In a Pröemium he explains that the publication of the work in an unfinished condition arose from the haste, not of ambition, but of anxiety: because he desired to leave behind him some outline of his object in the event of his death. After the Dedication to the King, a General Preface describes the present obstacles in the way of learning and the need of a new method.

Then follows an important section (entitled the Arrangement of the Work, Distributio Operis), which sets forth the divisions not of the Novum Organum, but of the whole of the proposed Magna Instauratio (in which the Novum Organum is but the second part). They are as follows :

1. The Divisions of the Sciences (Partitiones Scientiarum). 2. The New Instrument (Novum Organum), or Testimonies concerning the Interpretation of Nature (Indicia de Interpretatione Naturae).2

1 Daniel xii. 4. "Many shall pass through and knowledge shall be increased." 2 In his previous works Bacon declares that he is not a "judex" but an "index," and therefore prepared to give not "judicia" but "indicia." The full title of the Second Part, as given in the Norum Organum itself, adds the word "Vera," True Testimonies.

3. The Phenomena of the Universe, or History, Natural and Experimental, adapted for the foundation of Philosophy (Phaenomena Universi, sive Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis ad condendam philosophiam).

4. The Ladder of the Understanding (Scala Intellectus). [This part was to contain examples of the operation of the New Method and of the results to which it leads.1]

5. Fore-runners, or Anticipations of the Second Philosophy. (Prodromi, sive Anticipationes Philosophiae Secundae). [This was to contain such discoveries as Bacon had made by ordinary methods; and without waiting for the New Method; and it was intended to be tentative.]

6. The Second Philosophy, or Active Science (Philosophia Secunda, sive Scientia Activa). [This was to contain the results of the application of the New Philosophy to all Phenomena.]

After the Distributio Operis a second title-page announces that the First Part of the Instauratio concerning the Divisions of Learning is wanting, but that it may be supplied in some measure from the Second Book of the Advancement of Learning. It adds these words, "Here follows the Second Part of the Instauration, which sets forth the Art itself of interpreting Nature and of a truer operation of the Understanding; but not in the form of a regular treatise, but only summarily (per summas) digested into Aphorisms." A third title introduces the Novum Organum, or True Testimonies concerning the Interpretation of Nature. Then, after a Preface-in which the author declares his willingness to accept the received philosophy as a social and literary ornament, but summons the Children of Knowledge to a truer Learning-a fourth title announces the Summary of the Second Part, digested into Aphorisms; and when a fifth title has grandiloquently heralded "Aphorisms concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man," the Novum Organum itself is at last presented to us.

The First Book of the Novum Organum was written for the same purpose as the Cogitata et Visa, and reproduces the substance of the latter; it was designed as an introduction to a particular example of the new method of Induction (which is

1 For the description of the "scala" or "ladder," see the summary of the Cogitata et Visa above, p. 363.

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