and found impracticable or ineffectual, blot me out of your books as a dreamer that thought he had found out a great thing but it turned out nothing. If not, I still think it would be worth your while to try it."

A.

I partly comprehend your meaning; but I should prefer it in a less dramatic form. You think that the difference between what Galileo did and what Bacon wanted to be done, lay in this that Bacon's plan presupposed a history (or dictionary as you call it) of Universal Nature, as a storehouse of facts to work upon; whereas Galileo was content to work upon such facts and observations as he collected for himself. But surely this is only a difference in degree. Both used the facts in the same way; only Bacon wanted a larger collection of them.

B.

Say rather, Bacon wanted a collection large enough to give him the command of all the avenues to the secrets of Nature. You might as well say that there is only a difference of degree between the method of the man who runs his single head against a fortress, and the man who raises a force strong enough to storm it, because each uses the force he has in the same way, only one wants more of it than the other: or between stopping all the leaks in a vessel and stopping as many as you conveniently can. The truth is, that though the difference between a few and a few more is only a difference of degree, the difference between enough and not enough is a difference in kind. According to Galileo's method, the work at best could be done but partially. According to Bacon's (so at least he believed) it would be done effectually and altogether.

I will put you a case by way of illustration. Two men (call them James and John) find a manuscript in a character unknown to either of them. James, being skilled in lan

guages and expert at making out riddles, observes some characters similar to those of one of the languages which he understands; immediately sets himself to guess what they are; and succeeds in puzzling out here a name and there a date, with plausibility. Each succeeding guess, if it be right, makes the next easier; and there is no knowing precisely how much may be made out in this manner, or with what degree of certainty. The process is inductive, and the results, so far as they go, are discoveries. John seeing him thus employed comes up and says: "This is all very ingenious and clever, and far more than I could do by the same process. But you are not going the right way to work. You will never be able to decipher the manuscript in this way. I will tell you what we must do. Here (you see) are certain forms of character which continually recur. Here is one that comes more than once in every line; here another that comes once in every two or three lines; a third that comes only twice or thrice in a page; and so on. Let us have a list made of these several forms, with an index showing where and how often they occur. In the meantime I will undertake, upon a consideration of the general laws of language, to tell you, by the comparative frequency of their recurrence, what parts of speech most of these are. So we shall know which of them are articles, which conjunctions, which relatives, which auxiliaries, and so on. Setting these apart we shall be better able to deal with the nouns and verbs; and then by comparing the passages in which each occurs, we shall be able, with the help of your language learning, to make out the meaning first of one, then of another. As each is determined, the rest will be easier to determine; and by degrees we shall come to know them all. It is a slow process compared with yours, and will take time and labour and many hands. But when it is done we shall be able to read the whole book."

Here I think you have a picture in little of the difference between Bacon's project for the advancement of philosophy

and that which was carried into effect (certainly with remarkable success) by the new school of inductive science which flourished in his time. If we want to pursue the parallel further, we have only to suppose that John, after completing in a masterly manner a great portion of his work on the universal laws of language; after giving particular directions for the collection, arrangement, and classification of the index, and even doing several pages of it himself by way of example; is called away, and obliged to leave the completion of the work to his successors; and that his successors (wanting diligence to finish, patience to wait, or ability to execute) immediately fall back to the former method; -in which they make such progress and take such pride, that they never think of following out John's plan, but leave it exactly where he left it. And here I think you have a true picture of the state in which the matter now rests.

A.

I see. The manuscript is the volume of Nature. The learned linguist and expert maker-out of puzzles is Galileo or one of his school. The work on the laws of language is the Novum Organum. The index is the Natural and experimental History quæ sit in ordine ad condendam Philosophiam. The making-out of the words one by one is the Interpretation of Nature

B.

And the ultimate reading of the whole book is the "Historia Illuminata sive Veritas Rerum;" the "Philosophia Secunda," the sixth and last part of the Instauration; the consummation which Bacon knew he was not to be permitted himself to see, but trusted that (if men were true to themselves) the Fortune of the Human Race would one day achieve.

A.

And you think that they have not been true to themselves?

B.

Why what have they done with this work since he left it? There it lies to speak for itself, sticking in the middle of the Novum Organum. No attempt has been made, that I can hear of, to carry it out further. People seem hardly to know that it is not complete. John Mill observes that Bacon's method of inductive logic is defective, but does not advert to the fact that of ten separate processes which it was designed to include, the first only has been explained. The other nine he had in his head, but did not live to set down more of them than the names. And the particular example which he has left of an inductive inquiry does not profess to be carried beyond the first stage of generalization, vindemiatio prima as he calls it.

A.

the

It may be so; but why have they not attempted to carry his process out further? Is it not because they have found that they can get on faster with their old tools?

B.

Because they think they can get on faster; you cannot say they have found it until they have tried.

A.

Have they not tried Bacon's way partially, and found it not so handy? Has not Sir John Herschel, for instance, tried the use of his famous classification of Instances, and pronounced it " more apparent than real?” And is it not a fact that no single discovery of importance has been actually made by proceeding according to the method recom

mended by Bacon? I am sure I have heard as much reported upon the authority of a very eminent modern writer upon these subjects.

B.

So have I. And I can well believe that the use of Bacon's "Prerogatives of Instances," in the way they have been used, is not much; and for the reason given by Herschel, viz., because the same judgment which enables you to assign the Instance its proper class, enables you, without that assignation, to recognize its proper value. Therefore so long as the task of gathering his Instances as they grow wild in the woods is left to the Interpreter of Nature himself, there is little use in a formal classification; he knows exactly what he wants; what is not to his purpose he need not trouble himself with; what is to his purpose he can apply to that purpose at once. And each several man of genius will no doubt acquire a knack of his own by which he will arrive at his results faster than by any formal method. But suppose the Interpreter wants to use the help of other people, to whom he cannot impart his own genius or his peculiar gift of knowing at first sight what is to the purpose and what not. He wants them to assist him in gathering materials. How shall he direct them in their task so that their labours may be available for himself? I take it, he must distribute the work among several and make it pass through several processes. One man may be used to make a rough and general collection, — what we call an omnium gatherum. Another must be employed to reduce the confused mass into some order fit for reference. A third to clear it of superfluities and rubbish. A fourth must be taught to classify and arrange what remains. And here I cannot but think that Bacon's arrangement of Instances according to what he calls their Prerogatives, or some better arrangement of the same kind which experience ought to suggest, would be found to be of great value; especially when it is proposed to make through all