1894.] on Bacon's Key to Nature. 195 



more adequate prelude to the " Great Instauration " than the exalta- 

 tion of " the Dignity of Knowledge," in language rivalled only by the 

 advocacy of Freedom of Speech in the ' Areopagitica.' Nowhere does 

 Bacon, in the forefront of his age, more suggest the thought that 

 while morning broke on all statues alike, Memnon alone made music 

 in reply. Nowhere does he assert himself as an orator of science 

 more persuasive if not greater than Leonardo or Galileo ; nowhere 

 has he given more conclusive answers to the imputation of narrow if 

 not sordid utilitarianism, preferred against his name by those who 

 have taken it to their market without more than a glance at his 

 work. 



1. The ' Advancement of Learning,' expanded into the ' De Aug- 

 nientis,' fulfils as adequately as was possible for one man to do at 

 that age, the promise of the first part of his Instauration,. the 

 " Partitiones Scientiarum." They constitute a Diorama of Science, 

 practical and speculative, as known up to his time. With numerous 

 errors, they abound in wise reflections and countless suggestions, and 

 argument for endless comment, on which we cannot here touch. 



2. In logical if not actual order, the Second Part was meant to be 

 a Catalogue of all the facts of Nature under the title of " Phenomena 

 Universi," which Bacon thought might be made complete, but to which 

 he was only enabled in the ' Sylva Sylvarum ' and elsewhere to make 

 a few isolated contributions. 



3. Thirdly we have the ' Novum Organum ' itself. 



4 and 5. Two other fragmentary parts give examples of its 

 working. 



6. To the last, the Philosophy itself, the future progress of Science 

 has been making gradual contributions. 



I can only say a few words about the Organum. 



After some introductory aphorisms, Bacon dwells on the defects 

 inherent in man's own nature, errors of sense and of the understanding. 

 He then proceeds to arrange the prepossessions or mental disturbing 

 causes under the famous four heads of Idola. These being so well 

 known to Macaulay's schoolboy, merely call for enumeration. On 

 the threshold of inquiry we encounter those phantoms of the mind, 

 Theatri, reverence for Aristotle and the other misled and misleading 

 schools which he again in detail arraigns ; Fori, common talk and 

 public opinion ; Specus, a lawyer's or politician's bias which he had to 

 encounter in dealing with Coke and Cecil ; last, Tribus, the infusion 

 of the passions and the affections that coloured the dry light in his 

 own as in all minds. These are the Idola, which are to Science as 

 formal fallacies are to Logic, the prima facie pitfalls in the way, the 

 duties of omission in Natural Philosophy. It is evident that they 

 may either act together or separately in the same mind and in refer- 

 ence to the same thing. If I say the sun moves round the earth 

 because my eyes tell me so, it is an Idolum tribus ; if because language 

 takes it for granted, it is an Idolum fori ; because Ptolemy says so, it 

 is an Idolum theatri ; because that view agrees with other theories of 



