159 



dialectics, without a previous training in the practical 

 bearings of the subject, would be absurd, and almost 

 certain to beget error. " It cannot be that axioms 

 established by means of reasoning [alone] should be of 

 any value for the discovery of new results ; because the 

 subtilty of Nature far exceeds the subtilty of reasoning. 

 But axioms duly and orderly abstracted from parti- 

 culars, in their turn easily point out and mark off new 

 particulars ; and so render the sciences active*." Such 

 were the words of the greatest philosopher which this 

 country has ever produced ; and it would be well, whilst 

 examining the causes of what we see, and endeavouring 

 to obtain some faint and distant notion of the vast 

 scheme of Nature as originally designed, to keep them 

 constantly in view, lest, by trusting to theory only, 

 apart from observation and facts ; or by venturing to 

 pervert the latter (instead of being led by them), so as 

 to tally with our preconceived ideas of what ought to be, 

 we miss our road, and become lost in the mazy labyrinth 

 of our own fanciful inventions. 



With this preliminary stricture on the express duty 

 which devolves upon the naturalist (with whom the 

 phenomena of the organic world principally rest, for 

 interpretation) to make facts, rather than reason and 



* " Nullo mode fieri potest, ut axiomata per argumentationem 

 constituta ad inventionein novorum operum valeant ; quia subtilitas 

 natures subtilitatem argumentandi multis partibus superat. Sed 

 axiomata a particularibus rite et ordine abstracta, nova particularia 

 rursus facile indicant et designant; itaque scientias reddunt ac- 

 tivas." Novum Organum, Aphoris. xxiv. 



