198 Professor Nichol [Feb. 16, 



supreme and ultimate objects of his research. They are, he says, 

 related to effects when permanent qualities, as efficient causes are to 

 events, and as aids to their discovery he introduces his conception 

 of the latent Schematism or invisible structure of bodies as crystals 

 revealed by cleavage, and the latent or secret process by which 

 changes are brought about, as the process which takes place in a seed 

 or an egg, before the appearance of the plant or chick. 



Bacon himself approaches the subject of his Forms, with the same 

 sort of deference as Plato does his Idea of Good, and endeavours to 

 illustrate his conception with all sorts of Imagery. It is neither 

 mere shape nor an abstract idea, nor a modern law of Nature, which 

 is merely the register of a great fact. As regards the name, he says 

 " It seemeth best to keep way with antiquity ' usque ad aras ' and 

 therefore to retain the ancient terms, though I often alter the uses." 

 He does not perceive that in retaining the old names he drags along 

 with them a part of the old conceptions. His Form is to the shows 

 of things as inner to outer, it is the " very thing," having the same 

 relation to the so-called primary qualities as they have to the second- 

 ary, the hidden nature arrived at from the concrete manifestation. He 

 regards every complex body as a turma or congeries of simple qualities 

 which we can ascertain by analysis, as it were breaking down the 

 less known species into a better known genus and differentia. As 

 Heat is resolved into a specific sort of motion, so he holds it is pos- 

 sible to reduce all phenomena to combinations of simple elements, 

 which we may recombine and superinduce on various substances, and 

 so become the minister as well as the interpreter of Nature. 



Bacon constantly approaches great discoveries as with a divining 

 rod, and then passes them by. Astronomers, he says, in the ' De 

 Augmentis,' " have brought a beautiful hide but stuffed with straw." 

 They have arranged skilful systems to resolve the visible phenomena 

 into circular movements, but they have neglected to ask the cause of 

 the phenomena. The interior of the ox (namely the physical reason) 

 is wanting ; out of which (with the help of hypotheses) a theory 

 might be devised, which would not merely satisfy the phenomena, 

 but would set forth the substance, motion and influence of the 

 heavenly bodies as they really are. This is precisely what Newton, 

 working on the data of Kepler, really did ; and, in a subsequent para- 

 graph, Bacon, suggesting that the discovery is to be made by 

 obtaining information of heavenly things from those seen amongst 

 ourselves, comes still nearer in his anticipation. But he rarely " dips 

 into the future," without immediately reverting to the past. He 

 recedes from his guess as to the method by which the law of gravity 

 was finally established, to the impossible Tables of Speusippus at the 

 base and an Ixion-like embrace of the golden clouds which shrouded 

 the apex of his unaccomplished pyramid. He sought to solve 

 mysteries which Mature by no torture or binding of Proteus has ever 

 been forced to reveal. To ask the meaning of her primitive qualities 

 is to batter at the last gate of Spenser's Busiris, bearing the inscription 



