EXPERIMENTAL LEGISLATION. 755 



proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register 

 mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of 

 every sort of move. Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing 

 games, the more experienced it would become by the accumulation of 

 experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents the acquire- 

 ment of experience by our nervous organization. 



But Erasmus Darwin doubtless meant by experiment something 

 more than this unintentional heaping-up of experience. The part of 

 wisdom is to learn to foresee the results of our actions, by making 

 slight and harmless trials before we commit ourselves to an irrevo- 

 cable line of conduct. We ought to feel our way, and try the ice 

 before we venture on it to a dangerous extent. To make an experi- 

 ment, in this more proper sense, is to arrange certain known condi- 

 tions, or, in other words, to put together certain causal agents, in order 

 to ascertain their aggregate outcome or eflPect. The experiment has 

 knowledge alone for its immediate purpose. But he is truly happy, 

 as the Latin poet said, who can discern the causes of things, for, these 

 being known, we can proceed at once to safe and profitable applica- 

 tions. 



It need hardly be said that it is to frequent and carefully planned 

 appeals to experiment in the physical sciences that we owe almost all 

 the progress of the human race in the last three centuries. Even 

 moral and intellectual triumphs might often be traced back to depen- 

 dence on physical inventions, and to the incentive which they give to 

 general activity. Certainly, political and military success is almost 

 entirely dependent on the experimental sciences. It is difficult to dis- 

 cover that, as regards courage, our soldiers in Afghanistan and Zooloo- 

 land are any better than the men whose countries they invade. But 

 it is the science of the rifle, the shell, and the mountain-gun — science 

 perfected by constant experimentation — which gives the poor savage 

 no chance of successful resistance. To whom do we owe all this in its 

 first beginning, but to the great experimentalist, the friar, Roger 

 Bacon, of Oxford, our truest and greatest national glory, the smallest 

 of whose merits is that he first mentions gunpowder ; yet so little 

 does this nation yet appreciate the sources of its power and greatness 

 that the writings of Roger Bacon lie, to a great extent, unprinted and 

 unexplored. It is only among Continental scholars that Roger Bacon 

 is regarded as the miracle of his age and country. 



No doubt it is to Francis Bacon, the Lord High Chancellor of 

 England, that the world generally attributes the inauguration of the 

 new inductive era of science. This is hardly the place to endeavor to 

 decide whether the world has not made a great mistake. Pi'ofessor 

 Fowler, in his admirable critical edition of the "Novum Organum," 

 has said about all that can be said in favor of Lord Bacon's scientific 

 claims ; yet I hold to the opinion, long since stoutly maintained by the 

 late Professor De Morgan, not to speak of Baron Liebig and others, 



