PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF LORD BACON. 405 
ceed gradually from truth to truth, till we reach the most ge- 
neral that can be discovered,—these are the principles of phi- 
losophizing which. Bacon unfolded, and which Newron has, 
in the most emphatic terms, embodied with his discove- 
ries. * Quel témoignage,” exclaims an eminent French philoso- 
pher, “ rendu par le génie inventeur au génie des méthodes* !” 
Such, indeed, was the connection between the logic of the No- 
vum Organum, and the philosophy of the Principia, that it was 
only where the one was followed, that the other prevailed. 
The sublime Geometry of the Principia, says Mact.aurin, was 
admired by all, but it was only among minds trained by Ba- 
con’s. precepts that it found a ready reception for its Philo- 
sophy +}. 
To these proofs of the influence of Bacon’s precepts and 
exhortations, reflected in the acknowledgments, the views, and 
the discoveries of the early founders of the English School: of 
Experimental Philosophy, I have yet to add those which are 
furnished by the writings of its opponents and detractors. The 
public countenance given to that School by the erection of 
the Royal Society, early excited an extraordinary degree of 
jealousy on the part of the Universities; and a keen spirit. 
of opposition among the remaining supporters of the Aris- 
totelian philosophy. Sprar accordingly found it necessary, 
in his History of the Society, to employ a long argument to 
_ prove, that this new establishment would be attended with 
ar fom iy we 
* Deceranno— Hisloire comparée des. Systemes de Philosophie, tom: i. p.396.— 
The introduction to Dr Pemperton’s Account of Newton's Discoveries, a work, 
‘< the greater. part of which was read and approved,” as we are told inthe preface, 
by Newton himself, contains a summary of the doctrines of the Novum Organum ; 
and its author is represented as the first who taught those rules of philosophizing 
which Newton followed, and which his discoveries so nobly eonfirmed. 
+ Mactavrin’s Account of Newton’s Discoveries, p. 59, 60. 
