DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORK 23 



But the more difficult part of our task consists in the 

 form of induction, and the judgment to be made by it; for 

 that form of the logicians which proceeds by simple enu 

 meration, is a childish thing, concludes unsafely, lies open 

 to contradictory instances, and regards only common mat 

 ters, yet determines nothing: while the sciences require 

 such a form of induction, as can separate, adjust, and verify 

 experience, and come to a necessary determination by proper 

 exclusions and rejections. 



Nor is this all; for we likewise lay the foundations of 

 the sciences stronger and closer, and begin our inquiries 

 deeper than men have hitherto done, bringing those things 

 to the test which the common logic has taken upon trust. 

 The logicians borrow the principles of the sciences from 

 the sciences themselves, venerate the first notions of the 

 mind, and acquiesce in the immediate informations of the 

 senses, when rightly disposed; but we judge, that a real 

 logic should enter every province of the sciences with 

 a greater authority than their own principles can give; and 

 that such supposed principles should be examined, till they 

 become absolutely clear and certain. As for first notions of 

 the mind, we suspect all those that the understanding, left 

 to itself, procures; nor ever allow them till approved and 

 authorized by a second judgment. And with respect to the 

 informations of the senses, we have many ways of examin 

 ing them; for the senses are fallacious, though they discover 

 their own errors; but these lie near, while the means of dis 

 covery are remote. 



The senses are faulty in two respects, as they either fail 



neglect of this important preliminary to scientific investigation vitiated all the 

 Aristotelian physics, and kept the human mind stationary for two thousand 

 years, hardly too much praise can be conferred upon the philosopher who not 

 only pointed out the gap but supplied the materials for its obliteration. The 

 ardency of his nature, however, urged him to extremes, and he confounded 

 the accuracy of the deductive method with the straw and stubble on which it 

 attempted to erect a system of physics. In censuring intermediate proposi 

 tions, Bacon appears to have been unaware that he was condemning the only 

 forms through which reason or inference can manifest itself, and lecturing man 

 kind on the futility of an instrument which he was employing in every page 

 of his book. Ed. 



