44 NOVUM ORGANUM 



properly established, such will be the resulting systems 

 of philosophy and contemplation. But those which we 

 employ in the whole process leading from the senses and 

 things to axioms and conclusions, are fallacious and incom 

 petent. This process is fourfold, and the errors are in equal 

 number. In the first place the impressions of the senses are 

 erroneous, for they fail and deceive us. We must supply 

 defects by substitutions, and fallacies by their correction. 

 Secondly, notions are improperly abstracted from the senses, 

 and indeterminate and confused when they ought to be the 

 reverse. Thirdly, the induction that is employed is im 

 proper, for it determines the principles of sciences by simple 

 enumeration, 83 without adopting exclusions and resolutions, 

 or just separations of nature. Lastly, The usual method of 

 discovery and proof, by first establishing the most general 

 propositions, then applying and proving the intermediate 

 axioms according to them, is the parent of error and the 

 calamity of every science. Bat we will treat more fully 



33 Bacon is hardly correct in implying that the enumerationem per simplicem 

 was the only light in whic^n^e ancients looked upon induction, as they appear 

 to have regarded it as only^o\ie, and that the least important, of its species. 

 Aristotle expressly considers induction in a perfect or dialectic sense, and in 

 an imperfect or rhetorical sense. Thus if a genus (G), contains four species 

 (A, B, c, D), the syllogism would lead us to infer, that what is true of G, is 

 true of any one of the four. But perfect induction would reason, that what 

 we can prove of A, B, c, D, separately, we may properly state as true of G, the 

 whole genus. This is evidently a formal argument as demonstrative as the syl 

 logism. In necessary matters, however, legitimate induction may claim a wider 

 province, and infer of the whole genus what is only apparent in a part of the 

 species. Such are those inductive inferences which concern the laws of nature, 

 the immutability of forms, by which Bacon strove to erect his new system of 

 philosophy. The Stagyrite, however, looked upon enumerationem per simpli 

 cem, without any regard to the nature of the matter, or to the completeness 

 of the species, with as much reprehensive caution as Bacon, and guarded his 

 readers against it as the source of innumerable errors. Ed. 



