512 Rev.W.V.Harcouvt on Lord Brougham's statements 



gradual advance of this branch of science, in the aera begin- 

 ning with Boyle and ending with Hales, during which the 

 prevalent theory multiplied the number of gases beyond the truth, 

 by supposing them as numerous as the substances from which 

 they were obtained. This may be regarded as the aera of the 

 first regular school of inductive science (if we except the less 

 perfectly methodised school of Galileo), instituted by the ori- 

 ginal members of the Royal Society, for the professed purpose 

 of executing the grand design of Bacon. 



We have been lately told by a very able and lively writer, 

 that the sole use and effect of the Novum Organum of the 

 great founder of this school, was to bring down philosophers 

 from high but barren aims to the level of common utility, — 

 that " the inductive method has been practised ever since the 

 beginning of the world," — that " it is not only not true that 

 Bacon invented it, but that it is not true that he was the first 

 who correctly analysed that method and explained its uses," 

 — and that "he greatly overrated its utility;" we have been 

 further told that the difference between the "instances" which 

 make an absurd induction, and those which constitute a sound 

 one, "is not in the kind of instances, but in the number of in- 

 stances ; that is to say, the difference is not in that part of the 

 process for which Bacon has given precise rules, but in a cir- 

 cumstance for which no precise rule can be given:" and this 

 notion of philosophical induction is illustrated by asking, 

 " Will ten instances do, or fifty, or a hundred ? In how many 

 months would the first human beings who settled on the shores 

 of the ocean have been justified in believing that the moon 

 had an influence on the tides? After how many experiments 

 would Jenner have been justified in believing that he had dis- 

 covered a safeguard against the small-pox ? These are ques- 

 tions," it is added, " to which it would be most desirable to 

 have a precise answer ; but unhappily they are questions to 

 which no precise answer can be returned*." Certainly, if the 

 force of induction, and the inquisition and demonstration of 

 truth, does depend on the " number of instances," and not on 

 " the kind" Bacon has written in vain ; but you know, my 

 Lord, how it was, that in the hands of one who had better 

 studied " the inductive method," a vague and local idea, 

 darkened with errors that destroyed its credibility and use, 

 passed through the mint of a very Jew decisive experiments 

 into the treasury of accepted truths : that which this author 

 esteems the inductive process had been repeated thousands of 

 times without fruit; but when Jenner, after vaccinating a 

 child, inoculated it, and found that it resisted the virus of 

 * Life of Lord Bacon, p. 411. 



