444 KOVUM ORGANUM. [BOOK I. 



prohibit decisions, and the laying down of certain principles, till 

 we arrive regularly at generalities by the intermediate steps, and 

 thus keep the judgment in suspense and lead to uncertainty. 

 But our object is not uncertainty but fitting certainty, for wa 

 derogate not from the senses but assist them, and despise not th&amp;lt;3 

 understanding but direct it. It is better to know what is neces 

 sary, and not to imagine we are fully in possession of it, than to 

 imagine that we are fully in possession of it, and yet in reality to 

 know nothing which we ought. 



CXXVII. Again, some may raise this question rather than 

 objection, whether we talk of perfecting natural philosophy alono 

 according to our method, or the other sciences also, such an 

 logic, ethics, politics. We certainly intend to comprehend them 

 all. And as common logic, which regulates matters by syllo 

 gisms, is applied not only to natural, but also to every other sci 

 ence, so our inductive method likewise comprehends them all. 

 For we form a history and tables of invention for anger, fear, 

 shame, and the like, and also for examples in civil life, and the 

 mental operations of memory, composition, division, judgment, 

 and the rest, as well as for heat and cold, light, vegetation, and 

 the like. But since our method of interpretation, after preparing 

 and arranging a history, does not content itself with examining the 

 operations and disquisitions of the mind like common logic, but 

 also inspects the nature of things, we so regulate the mind that it 

 may be enabled to apply itself in every respect correctly to that 

 nature. On that account we deliver numerous and various pre 

 cepts in our doctrine of interpretation, so that they may apply in 



u The old error of placing the deductive syllogism in antagonism to 

 the inductive, as if they were not both parts of one system or refused to 

 cohere together. So far from there being any radical opposition 

 between them, it would not be difficult to show that Bacon s method 

 was syllogistic in his sense of the term. For the suppressed premiss of 

 every Baconian enthymeme, viz. the acknowledged uniformity of the 

 laws of nature as stated in the axiom, whatever has once occurred will 

 occur again, must be assumed as the basis of every conclusion which he 

 draws before we can admit its legitimacy. The opposition, therefore, of 

 Bacon s method could not be directed against the old logic, for it assumed 

 and exemplified its principles, but rather to the abusive application 

 which the ancients made of this science, in turning its powers to the 

 development of abstract principles which they imagined to be pregnant 

 with the solution of the latent mysteries of the universe. Bacon justly 

 overthrew these ideal notions, and accepted of no principle as a basis 

 which was not guaranteed by actual experiment and observation ; 

 and so far he laid the foundations of a sound philosophy by turn 

 ing the inductive logic to its proper account in the interpretation of 

 nature. 



