22 THE GREAT INSTAURATION 



defined and limited, the whole structure falls to the ground. 

 We therefore reject the syllogism, and that not only as re 

 gards first principles, to which logicians do not apply them, 

 but also with respect to intermediate propositions, which 

 the syllogism contrives to manage in such a way as to 

 render barren in effect, unfit for practice, and clearly un- 

 suited to the active branch of the sciences. Nevertheless, 

 we would leave to the syllogism, and such celebrated and 

 applauded demonstrations, their jurisdiction over popular 

 and speculative acts; while, in everything relating to the 

 nature of things, we make use of induction foV both our 

 major and minor propositions; for we consider induction 

 as that form of demonstration which closes in upon nature 

 and presses on, and, as it were, mixes itself with action. 

 Whence the common order of demonstrating is absolutely 

 inverted; for instead of flying immediately from the senses, 

 and particulars, to generals, as to certain fixed poles, about 

 which disputes always turn, and deriving others from these 

 by intermediates, in a short, indeed, but precipitate manner, 

 fit for controversy, but unfit to close with nature; we con 

 tinually raise up propositions by degrees, and in the last 

 place, come to the most general axioms, which are not 

 notional, but well defined, and what nature allows of, as 

 entering into the very essence of things. 1 



1 This passage, though tersely and energetically expressed, is founded upon 

 a misconception of deduction, or, as Bacon phrases it, syllogistic reasoning, and 

 its relation to induction. The two processes are only reverse methods of infer 

 ences, the one concluding from a general to a particular, and the other from 

 a particular to a general, and both schemata are resolvable into propositions, 

 and propositions into words, which, as he says, are but the tokens and signs 

 of things. Now if these first notions, which are as it were the soul of words 

 and the basis of every philosophic fabric, be hastily abstracted from things, and 

 vague and not clearly defined and limited, the whole structure, whether erected 

 by induction or deduction, or both, as is most frequently the case, must fall to 

 the ground. The error, therefore, does not lie in the deductive mode of proof, 

 without which physical science could never advance beyond its empirical stage, 

 but in clothing this method in the vulgar language of the day, and reasoning 

 upon its terms as if they pointed at some fact or antithesis in nature, instead of 

 previously testing the accuracy of such expressions by experiment and observa 

 tion. As such notions are more general than the individual cases out of which 

 they arise, it follows that this inquiry must be made through the medium of 

 induction, and the essential merit of Bacon lies in framing a system of rules 

 by which this ascending scale of inference may be secured from error. As the 



