680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



common property. The essential novelty on which he relied for the 

 infallibility of his mode of interrogating Nature was his method of 

 exclusions. But this ingenious invention implied an impossible pre- 

 liminary, and rested on a monstrous assumption. The preliminary to 

 its successful operation was the compilation of what he called a " Nat- 

 ural History " ; that is, an exhaustive catalogue of all natural phe- 

 nomena, constituting a vast repository of materials for induction. 

 Until this should be accomplished, he laid down dogmatically that 

 no progress worthy the human race was possible,* and declared the 

 history without the method to be infinitely more serviceable to science 

 than the method without the history, f The assumption was that the 

 infinite complexity of visible and sensible objects is formed by the 

 varying combinations of a limited number of " simple natures " (such 

 as neat, weight, color, etc.), just as words and sentences in endless 

 diversity are compounded out of a few elementary signs. J And as, 

 by learning six-and-twenty letters, we get at the secret of written lan- 

 guage, so we have only to construct a complete alphabet of Nature, in 

 order to read her riddles with ease and certainty. Thus the second 

 step in the process was nothing less than to frame a synopsis of all the 

 modes of action in the universe. The peculiar efficacy of the " Exclu- 

 siva" now becomes apparent. All "natures" save one being excluded 

 by a series of skillful experiments from causal connection with the 

 phenomenon under investigation, the residual element is negatively, 

 but conclusively, proved to be the " true cause " or " form " sought for. 

 It was from this special invention, and not from the general appli- 

 cation of inductive rules, that Bacon's " Organ " derived its peculiar 

 efficacy. This was the new art of discovery likened by him to a pair 

 of compasses, armed with which the least skillful hand might be guided 

 to define a perfect circle. This was the universal nostrum the elixir 

 vitce of science which had the one drawback common to all methods 

 professing to transcend nature that its operation was clogged with 

 an impossible condition. It is easy enough for us, from our present 

 point of view, to see that the method of exclusions was tainted with 

 a logical vice. It implied a petitio principii ; it presupposed, while 

 promising to impart, universal knowledge. It was not so easy it was 

 perhaps impossible for Bacon, for his contemporaries, and even for 

 his immediate successors, to see this. They did not in fact perceive 

 any impossibility in a scheme for tabulating the universe. On the 

 contrary, they looked forward confidently to the time when it should 

 be accomplished. The preparation of a universal history of nature 



* " Works," vol. i., p. 394, Spedding's edition. 



\ Ibid., vol. ii., p. 16. 



\ "Novum Organum," lib. i., p. 121. 



The sixth division of the Second Book of the " Novum Organum " was to have been 

 entitled " De synopsi omnium naturarum in universo " ; but this part of the work was 

 never executed. 



