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respect worthy of the sublime genius by which it was formed." It would be absurd to conclude that because Bacon refers history to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the reason, that therefore his illogical method affects the correctness of the enumerations, definitions, and subordinate classifications themselves. We believe that Bacon's survey, vast as it is, will be found to be the correctest ever given; and that his report itself (we speak of course in relation to the then state of sciences) was not, and could not be vitiated by the preliminary mistake; and none knew better than himself, "that all partitions of knowledges should be accepted rather for lines and veins, than for sections and separations; that the continuance and entireness of knowledge be preserved.” Upon this universal partition of knowledge into History, Poetry, and Philosophy, taken from the triplicity of the intellectual faculties, our author wrote the Partitiones Scientiarum, which occupies the eight remaining books, of which it is impossible to present any satisfactory analysis, from the depth of their erudition, and the amazing minuteness as well as encyclopædical vastness of his plan. Let the reader turn to the tabular view, entitled, “The General Distribution of Human Knowledge," in The Advancement, which is a literal translation of that "Partitio Universalis Doctrinæ Humanæ," in the De Augmentis; and from the inspection of such a table of contents, he will be disposed to agree with us that any intelligible or useful outline of such a work is not compatible with the limits of this Essay. But on all and each of these, large and small, principal and secondary, does Bacon descant with unequalled sagacity, pointing out the deficiencies of each, and the means of rectifying the errors of all.

The remainder of the second book is taken up with the two first of his partitions, History and Poetry. Eleven chapters are devoted to the former, with its divisions and subdivisions ; and the twelfth contains the best account ever given of the second principal part of human learning-" Poesy," in which he can report no deficience. "It being as a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, it hath sprung up and spread abroad more than any other kind: but, to ascribe to it that which is due, for the expression of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are beholden to poets, more than to the philosophers' works; and for wit and eloquence, not much less than to orators' harangues. But it is not good to stay too long in the theatre. Let us now pass on to the judicial place or palace of the mind, which we are to approach and view with more reverence and attention."

The third book contains six chapters, and is occupied with the partitions of philosophy into the "three knowledges "of God, of nature, of man. "In philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumfered of nature, or are reflected or reverted upon himself; out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy, or humanity. For all things are marked or stamped with this triple character-of the power of God, the difference of nature, and the use of man." He there recommends the erection of the Philosophia Prima. Natural Theology is the subject of the second chapter, and the remaining chapters are occupied with the speculative and operative partitions of natural philosophy, and the partition of the mathematics. Perhaps his proposed " Kalendar of Popular Errors" suggested to Sir Thomas Browne, who was his friend, the "Vulgar Errors." This chapter being completed, the author says of it," Thus have we now dealt with two or three beams of man's knowledge, that is, radius directus, which is referred to nature; radius refractus, which is referred to God, and cannot refract truly because of the inequality of the medium; there resteth radius reflexus, whereby man beholdeth and contemplateth himself."

The fourth book, which consists of three chapters, is accordingly occupied with a portion of the radius reflexus, the philosophy of humanity, of which the second chapter is the most valuable, as treating of medicine, under the three parts of the preservation of health, the

cure of diseases, and the prolongation of life; and the first chapter, among other curious suggestions, certainly hints at our modern phrenology. "But unto all this knowledge de communi vinculo, of the concordances between the mind and the body, that part of inquiry is most necessary which considereth of the seats and domiciles, which the several faculties of the mind do take and occupate in the organs of the body; which knowledge hath been attempted, is controverted, and deserveth to be much better inquired." But this inquisition requires a " Delian diver," and he has not been found yet. "And thus much," concludes our author, " of that particular human philosophy which concerns the body, which is but the tabernacle of the mind."

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The fifth book "concerns the mind," and it consists of five chapters. The partitions are into logical and ethical: and logic is divided into invention, judgment, memory, and tradition; " for man's labour is to invent that which is sought or propounded; or to judge that which is invented; or to retain that which is judged; or to deliver over that which is retained." Invention is of two kinds, " much differing," the one of arts and sciences, the other of arguments the former is reported deficient on three grounds, and he delivers some important instructions in the latter. The art of judging is divided into corrupt and genuine, or syllogism and induction; and again into analytics and the doctrine of confutations; the last of which consisted of three parts, the confutation of sophisms, interpretation, and idols. The doctrine of idols was partitioned into idols of the tribe, the den, and the market. The art of custody or memory he divided into the doctrine of helps for the memory, and of the memory itself.

The sixth book contains four chapters, and treats of the art of memory, which he divides into grammar, method, and ornament of speech. Grammar, of which he seemed to have a very perfect conception, is divided into the art of speaking, and the art of writing; and again into literary and philosophical, or with regard to words and things. The art of speaking regarded the accidents of words, (1.) sound, (2.) measure, (3.) accent. The art of writing has two parts, with regard, (1.) to alphabet, and, (2.) cipher. Method of speech is distinguished into, (1.) doctrinal or initiation, (2.) open or concealed, (3.) aphoristical or regular, (4.) into question and answer, and, (5.) the method of conquering prejudice. Rhetoric and oratory are considered under the doctrine of ornament of speech, with an appendage respecting a collection of sophisms, studied antithets, and lesser forms of speech. And under two general appendices of traditive knowledge, he reviews the art of criticism, and school-learning; in the one he discusses certain points relative to editions of authors, illustrating authors, and censuring them; and the other is considered under the separate heads of public schools and colleges; of preparing the genius; of suiting the study to the genius; of the use of academical exercises; and the action of the stage, considered as a part of discipline in schools. The Colours of Good and Evil, will be found in the third chapter of this book.

The seventh book is occupied with ethics or morality; the leading divisions of which relate to the doctrine of the image of good, and the cultivation of the mind; under both of which will be found a rich but compact store of moral observations, as terse and yet as full, for pages together, as any of the Essays themselves.

The eighth book contains, in three chapters, the partition of civil knowledge, and it is worthy of one so thoroughly acquainted with human affairs. It is treated of under the three heads, of, (1.) prudence in conversation, (2.) prudence in business, and, (3.) prudence in government. That part of the second head, which concerns the advancement of fortune, or the way of rising in life, discovers the most extraordinary study of, and insight into, the art of promotion. In the third chapter are discussed the partitions relative to the preservation, the happiness, and the enlargement of a state; and the doctrine of universal justice, already noticed.

We must quote, with a slight omission or two, the splendid passage which he introduces in concluding the eighth book of partitions.

"Thus have I concluded this portion of learning touching civil knowledge, and with civil knowledge have concluded human philosophy; and with human philosophy, philosophy in general and being now at some pause, looking back into that I have passed through, this writing seemeth to me, si nunquam fallit imago, as far as a man can judge of his own work, not much better than that noise or sound which musicians make while they are in tuning their instruments, which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterwards. So have I been content to tune the instruments of the Muses, that they may play that have better hands. And surely when I set before me the condition of these times, in which learning hath made her third visitation or circuit in all the qualities thereof; as the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this age; the noble helps and lights which we have by the travails of ancient writers; the art of printing, which communicateth books to men of all fortunes; the openness of the world by navigation, which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a mass of natural history; the leisure wherewith these times abound, not employing men so generally in civil business, as the states of Græcia did in respect of their popularity, and the state of Rome in respect of the greatness of their monarchy; the consumption of all that ever can be said in controversies of religion, which have so much diverted men from other sciences; and the inseparable propriety of time, which is ever more and more to disclose truth;-I cannot but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period of time will far surpass that of the Græcian and Roman learning: only if men will know their own strength and their own weakness both, and take one from the other, light of invention, not fire of contradiction; and esteem of the inquisition of truth as of an enterprise, and not as of a quality or ornament; and employ wit and magnificence to things of worth and excellency, and not to things vulgar, and of popular estimation. As for my labours, let men reprehend them, so they observe and weigh them. For the appeal is lawful, though it may be it shall not be needful, from the first cogitations of men to their second, and from the nearer times to the times farther off."

The ninth and last book relates to the division of inspired theology," the sabbath and port of all men's labours and peregrinations," which he leaves to divines; and only discusses its three appendices-the doctrine of the right use of reason in theology; the degrees of unity in the city of God; and lastly the emanations of the Scriptures, the unadulterated first flowings of Bible truth, or a short and judicious collection of notes and observations upon particular texts of holy writ.

Between the De Augmentis and Novum Organum, is placed the Novus Orbis Scientiarum, sive desiderata, containing a list or recapitulation of the deficiencies of knowledge, "noted" in the eight last books of the former work; which embrace its two main divisions of memory and reason, or history and philosophy.

The author had thus "made as it were a small globe of the intellectual world:" and we have no such survey extant. It was no small mastery of knowledge to obtain a general acquaintance with the state of contemporary learning; but our author appears to have been intimately acquainted with the principles of the sciences, although not with their endless ramifications into particulars. His acquisitions extending almost to all that there was to acquire, it will be seen that he observed carefully and pointed out clearly, wherein, upon their own grounds, they were deficient, "either as not constantly occupate or not well converted by the labour of man." Their position being retrograde, or moving in a wrong direction, the necessity of "advancement" is universally felt through their whole mass or globe. The man that could so thoroughly acquaint himself with such themes, and in such simple but lofty terms inform others of the results of his reflections,-who could exhibit with equal sagacity and accuracy, these many and great desiderata, and kindle his various sub

jects into a blaze of hopeful glory, "by power capacious and serene,”—was the man to supply the "one thing" they all lacked, by realizing his own anticipations, and making the very conquest he predicted.

"Sequitur," therefore, says the reporter himself, "secunda pars INSTAURATIONIS quæ artem ipsam interpretandi naturam, et verioris adoperationis intellectus, exhibit: neque eam ipsam tamen in corpore tractatus justi; sed tantum digestam per summas, in aphorismos."

We now come to the second, and by far the most important, part of the Great Instauration, which he entitles, probably after Aristotle's Organon, the Novum Organum Scientiarum, or a new method of studying the sciences. It is the philosophy of the instrument, the philosophy of science itself, or the universal philosophical machine. The Cogitata et Visa, written many years previously, was the rough draft of this great conception, but this is the result of, apparently, the most arduous of his labours. The preface is unostentatious but pregnant. He first glances at the state of ancient philosophy. Condemning at the onset the two opposite errors which had hitherto prevented a just acquaintance with nature; the one being that of magisterially pronouncing on her operations, as if we had done every thing, and knew all that could be known, which of course stops further inquiry, and quenches the spirit of discovery; the other being that of the sceptical philosophers, who maintain that nothing can be known. After preferring the middle course of the more ancient Greeks, who, " inter pronunciandi jactantiam et acatalepsiæ desperationem," though they complained of the difficulty of inquisition, and the darkness of things, still kept on; he objects to them, that even they, though bent upon discovery rather than disputation, did not appear to have applied a sufficient rule in their inquiries, but placed all things in subtlety of thought and fluctuation of the mind. We then have the design of the work before us, which he describes as more easily explained than executed, " for it is that we may establish a scale of certainty, that we may defend the sense by a kind of reduction, though generally rejecting that work of the mind that is merely subsequent on sense; still that we may open and defend a new and certain way from the perception of the senses themselves." The art of logic intended thus much, but it came too late as a remedy after the mind was possessed by customs, and polluted by idols, which it rather fixed than corrected. He therefore sees no other remedy than the beginning anew the whole work of the mind, and from the very first never to leave it to itself, but keep it under perpetual regulation; "ac res, veluti per machinas, conficiatus." The mind needs its instruments as well as the body, and what the assistance of mechanical powers is to the one, a right method of employing its faculties is to the other. The upshot of the whole matter is thus strikingly illustrated and set forth. "Truly if men had set about mechanical works, with their bare hands, unassisted with instruments, as they have ventured to set about intellectual works almost with the naked powers of the mind, they would have found themselves able to have effected very little, even though they combined their forces. If some large obelisk were to be raised, would it not seem a kind of madness for men to set about it with their naked hands? And would it not be greater madness still to increase the numbers of such naked labourers, in confidence of effecting the thing? And were it not a farther step in lunacy, to pick out the weaker bodied, and use only the robust and strong; as if that would certainly do? But if not content with this, recourse should be had to anointing the limbs, according to the art of the ancient wrestlers; and then all begin afresh; would not this be raving with reason? Yet this is but like the wild and fruitless procedure of mankind in intellectual matters, whilst they expect great things from multitude and consent, or the excellence and penetration of capacity; or strengthen as it were the sinews of the mind with logic. And yet, for all this bustle and struggle, men still continue to work with their naked understandings. At the same time it is evident, that in every great work, which the hand of man performs, the strength

of each person cannot be increased; nor that of all be made to act at once, without the use of instruments and machines."

He considers it fortunate that his design does not interfere with the ancients, whose honours remain undisturbed, as he does not proceed in their way, but in one altogether new and untried, and unknown to them; nor was he bent upon disturbing the received system of philosophy, which might for him continue to cherish disputes, and embellish speech, as his would not be useful for such ends; not being very obvious, or flattering to pre-notions, or taking with the vulgar, otherwise than by utility and effects. Therefore he wished that there should be two fountains or dispensations of doctrines-two friendly tribes of philosophers; in short, one method of cultivating and another of discovering the sciences. After wishing success to those who find the former more agreeable, he appeals in noble style to the true sons of science to join with him. "If any one has it at heart, not only to receive the things hitherto discovered, but to advance still farther; and not to conquer an adversary by disputation, but to conquer nature by works; not neatly to raise probable conjectures, but certainly and demonstratively to know; let him attach himself to us,-that leaving the entrance of nature which infinite numbers have trod, we may at length pass into her inner courts." He concludes with a natural request enough for a fair hearing, as the piece had been re-written by him no less than twelve times, in so many years, until, out of the Cogitata et Visa, it was brought to its present degree of perfection; and wishes that, when the subject was mastered, the method tried, experience consulted, and ill habits corrected, they who have thus begun to be themselves, would use their judgment on his work.

The Novum Organum consists of two books, of which the first is intended to prepare the mind for the reception and use of the instruments and instructions contained in the second; which delivers, or professes to deliver, the art of working with this new machine in the interpretation of nature.

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The first book consists of one hundred and thirty aphorisms, concerning "the interpretation of nature, and the dominion of man." This form of writing in aphorisms was considered to possess some advantages over the common method; which looks more plausible and continuous, but is often a mere deceptive colouring thrown over a few empty and futile particulars. "The writing in aphorisms," we are told in the Advancement of Learning, hath many excellent virtues, whereto the writing in method doth not approach. For, first, it trieth the writer whether he be superficial or solid: for aphorisms, except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of sciences; for discourse by illustration is cut off; recitals of examples are cut off; discourse of connexion and order is cut off; so there remaineth nothing to fill the aphorisms, but some good quantity of observation: and therefore no man can suffice, nor in reason will attempt to write aphorisms, but he that is sound and grounded. Secondly, methods are more fit to win consent or belief, but less fit to point to action; for they carry a kind of demonstration in orb or circle, one part illuminating another, and therefore satisfactory. But particulars being dispersed do best agree with dispersed directions. And lastly, aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite man to inquire further; whereas methods, carrying the show of a total, do secure men as if they were at farthest."

The first of these aphorisms, is the fundamental principle of the inductive philosophy. "Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, can only understand and act in proportion as he observes, or contemplates, the order of nature; more he can neither know nor do." From neglecting observation and experiment to an incredible extent, the logic and physics of Bacon's time were in a most deplorable condition; in that condition, in short, which he has so faithfully pointed out in the former work. This aphorism has redeemed the sciences, and wrought that wondrous change in the aspect of things which he predicted. "The rest of all the mischief in the sciences is this; that falsely magnifying and

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