Notice of British Naturalists. 221 
important arid interesting it may be in its peculiar features, we 
are apt to neglect and overlook. That which is rare, and is sel- 
dom observed, excites an active investigation. And thus it was 
that the philosophers of old, in their pursuit of natural science, ap- 
plied their chief attention to phenomena, and left the more general 
laws of physics uninvestigated. Nobody sought to know why 
astone falls to the ground ; why smoke ascends; or why the stars 
revolve around the earth; while the discovery of a double-head- 
ed snake, or a deformed bird, excited the warmest interest, and 
the approach of an African seal to the shores of Europe, revived 
the fable of a mermaid. But the natural consequence of this 
neglect of common, and of minute attention to the extraordinary , 
occurrences, was to render it impossible to establish any general 
or useful principles, and still further, to deduce any general laws. 
It is a beneficial rule of the Creator, that that which is in nature 
Most éruly valuable, should be the easiest of access; and it is in 
the properties of such things as exist familiarly around us, that 
Wwe must look for the explanation of what seldom occurs. 
To quote again from Bacon, in a passage which contains the 
germ of much of his Novum Organum: “So it cometh often to 
pass, that mean and small things discover great, better than great 
can discover the small : and therefore Aristotle noteth well, ‘ that 
the nature of every thing is best seen in its smallest portions,’ 
and for that cause he inquireth the nature of a commonwealth, 
first in a family, and the simple conjugations of man and wife, 
parent and child, master and servant, which are in every cottage. 
Ven so likewise, the nature of this great city of the world, and 
the policy thereof, must be first sought in mean concordances and 
small portions. So we see how that secret of nature, of the turn- 
ng of iron touched with the loadstone towards the north, was 
found out in needles of iron, and not in bars of iron.” 
Notwithstanding, however, this well merited compliment to 
the Aristotelian philosophy, as regards Natural Science, this 
Course is imperfect and deceptive. It has culled a few froma 
Steat many things; it has taken its principles from common expe- 
Menee, and without due attention to the evidence or precise nature 
of the facts; the philosopher is left to work out the rest from his 
°Wn invention, y 
Like Luther before him, his great predecessor in the work of 
reform, although in another-sphere, Bacon bore a strong enmity 
ti aoe eae 
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