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"His lordship owned it under his hand, 'that he was frail and did partake of the abuses of the times.' And surely he was a partaker of their severities also. The great cause of his suffering is to some a secret. I leave them to find it out by his words to King James. "I wish, as I am the first, so I may be the last sacrifice in your times, and, when from private appetite it is resolved, that a creature shall be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough, from any thicket, whither it hath strayed, to make a fire to offer it with.'"

But, returning from this digression, we must quit the introduction with venturing to intimate, that the doctrine of Idols, most important as it is, ought to have been classed, as in the Advancement of Learning, not under the head of Invention, but of Judgement: and we are more confirmed in this opinion from the belief that these were Bacon's own sentiments, and that he explained these Idols in the Novum Organum, solely to comply with the prejudices of the times.

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Many, (he says,) will, doubtless, be inquisitive to know, what this just and proper method is; and require it to be told them naked and artless, without any preamble; that they may exercise their own judgements upon it; and we wish, indeed, matters were so well with them, that we might gratify their request. But the truth is, the minds of men have the ways and passages up to them so thick beset, and obstructed with such dark, deep-rooted, and inveterate idols, as in no wise to be soon cleared, laid level, and polished, to receive the true and native images of things. Whence we are obliged to use our utmost address to insinuate and slide into these dark and thick coverts. as lunatics are only to be cured by art, and proper applications; but are rather made worse by force, opposition, and rough usage; the same course are we obliged to take, and use a gentle method in the cure of this universal madness."

And again,

For,

"And yet, unless we were greatly unskilled in the nature of men's minds, and of things, and desired to enter the road at once, without making the least trial thereof, it lies upon us to remember, that inveterate errors can only be rooted out by art and gentle treatment; and that, therefore, a certain prudence and compliance must be used, so far as may comport with candour and simplicity, in order to prevent opposition before it is made."

These reasons, we confess, did not appear to us to be satisfactory. Instead of these or any compliances with the times, a great philosopher might have trusted confidently to the progress of truth, and having" held out a light to posterity by this new torch set up in the obscurity of philosophy," have left it with the consciousness that it would dissipate error, and diffuse blessings through all succeeding ages.

It is now time we should proceed to the Art itself of Interpreting Nature.

The discovery of the properties of creatures, and the imposition of names, was the occupation of Adam in Paradise; and to attain this, all the different creatures were brought before him.

"It was not the pure knowledge of nature and universality, a knowledge, by the light whereof man did give names unto other creatures in Paradise, as they were brought before him, according unto their properties, which gave the occasion of the fall: but it was the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give law unto himself, and to depend no more upon God's commandments.

With the full consciousness of our infirmities, the Art of Invention endeavours by the same mode to discover the laws of nature; by an examination, not of any one isolated creature, but of all the different existences

To accomplish this object, the Novum Organum suggests certain tables of invention for all subjects of inquiry, for the passions of anger, fear, modesty, and the like; for models of government and civil affairs; and, for the mental actions of the memory, composition, division, judgement, &c., for heat, cold, light, vegetation, &c.

"Natural and Experimental History," he says, "is so copious and diffusive a thing, as to confound and distract the understanding, unless such history be digested and ranged in proper order: therefore Tables and subservient chains of Instances are to be formed and digested in such a manner, that the understanding may commodiously work upon them."

The nature of these tables is shewn for the sake of illustration, merely by the instance of "Heat." Should, therefore, any modern chemist object to the experiments, we hope he will pardon us for reminding him of the lawyer, who refused to proceed in a work because it contained a bad will:-for the object of Bacon, in this place, is not Philosophy but Logic: it is not Invention, but to explain in what the art of Invention consists. For this purpose he thus admonishes his readers.

"Some, without doubt, upon reading our history and tables of invention, will meet with experiments not well verified, or even absolutely false; and may thence, perhaps, be apt to suspect, that our inventions are built upon doubtful principles, and erroneous foundations. But this is nothing for such slips must necessarily happen in the beginning; however, if this objection be rightly weighed, what must be thought of the common natural history, which, in comparison of ours, is so negligent and remiss; or, what of the philosophy and sciences,

built upon such quicksands? Let no one, therefore, be concerned, if our history has its errors."

We will endeavor concisely to exhibit specimens of these different Tables, referring our readers, if we fail in a clear statement, to the work itself.

There are five tables.

1. Affirmative Table.

2. Negative Table.
3. Table of Comparisons.

4. Table of Exclusions.

5. Table of Results.

TABLE I. OR AFFIRMATIVE TABLE.

A collection of all the known instances that agree in the same

nature.

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The use of this table is to shew the error of attempting to discover the nature of anything in the thing itself: of the magnet, for instance, without considering all attractive bodies: or canine madness, without considering all spasm and irregular action of the vital spirit.

Annexed to this table there are the following admonitions. 1. Let these instances be collected from subjects however dissimilar or sordid.

2. Be not deterred by the number of particulars.

3. Let the collection be made, with remembrance of our tendency to generalize, and, therefore, without any hasty indulgence of speculation.

4. The mind may accidentally form a correct conclusion from an inspection of this table, the probable correctness varying according to the ingenuity of the inspector.

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TABLE II. OR NEGATIVE TABLE.

A collection of all the known instances of similar bodies, which do not agree in the same nature.

Thus, let the nature sought be Heat.

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This table, from the limited nature of our powers, is necessarily confined to similar natures: for, although to form an indisputable conclusion, every instance should be collected in which the sought nature is absent; yet such an attempt would be hopeless and endless.

God, the great giver and creator of forms, doubtless knows them, by immediate affirmation, at the first glance of the understanding and so, perhaps, may angels and such sublime intelligences, but this far exceeds the human capacity, which can only proceed by negatives, and lastly, after a perfect exclusion, end in affirmatives.

"It was," says the eloquent divine to whom we have already referred our readers," Adam's happiness, in the state of innocence, to have his faculties clear and unsullied. He came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon their names: he could view essences in themselves, and read. forms without the comment of their respective properties: he could see consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn and in the womb of their causes. Could any difficulty have been proposed, the resolution would have been as early as the proposal; it could not have had time to settle into doubt. Like a better Archimedes, the issue of all his enquiries was an evenna, an ignea, the offspring of his brain, without the sweat of his brow. I confess 'tis difficult for us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and are still bred up with the same infirmities about us with which we were borne, to raise our thoughts and imagination to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature in the time of innocence, as it is for a peasant, bred up in the obscurities of a cottage, to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court. We may, however, collect the excellency of the understanding then, by the glorious remainders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building, by the magnificence of its ruins. And, certainly, that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable; he that is comely when old and decrepit, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise."

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The first use of this table is, as a correction of the affirmative table, to prevent hasty generalization. As if Samuel should have rested in those sons of Jesse which were brought before him in the house, and should not have sought David who was absent in the field."-Thus, when it appears that the blood of terrestrial animals is hot, and the blood of fish cold, the hasty generalization, that the blood of animals is hot, is corrected.

Another use of this table is to discover the nature sought, by observing its qualities which are absent in the analogous nature, "like the images of Cassius and Brutus, in the funeral of Junia of which, not being represented as many others were," Tacitus saith, "Eo ipso præfulgebant, quod non_visebantur." Thus boiling water is hot: ice is cold: living bodies are hot; dead bodies are cold; but in boiling water and in living bodies there is motion of parts: in ice and dead bodies they are fixed.Does it not seem, therefore, that motion of parts is of the nature of heat?

TABLE III.-OF COMPARISONS.

A table of comparisons of quantity, of the nature sought in the same bodies and in different bodies.

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