FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 329 



ne scilicet homines putent se per opera ignis, aliquid simile iis 

 quse in Natura fiunt, educere et formare posse:" and again, 

 " Compositionem tantum opus Hominis, Mistionem vero opus 

 solius Naturae esse : ne scilicet homines sperent aliquam ex arte 

 Corporum naturalium generationern aut transformationem."* 

 The grand distinction in the ancient scientific speculations, 

 between natural and violent motions, though not without a 

 plausible foundation in the appearances themselves, was doubt- 

 less greatly recommended to adoption by its conformity to this 

 prejudice. 



7. From the fundamental error of the scientific inquirers 

 of antiquity, we pass, by a natural association, to a scarcely 

 less fundamental one of their great rival and successor, Bacon. 

 It has excited the surprise of philosophers that the detailed 

 system of inductive logic, which this extraordinary man 

 laboured to construct, has been turned to so little direct use 

 by subsequent inquirers, having neither continued, except in a 

 few of its generalities, to be recognised as a theory, nor having 

 conducted in practice to any great scientific results. But this, 

 though not unfrequently remarked, has scarcely received any 

 plausible explanation ; and some, indeed, have preferred to 

 assert that all rules of induction are useless, rather than sup- 

 pose that Bacon's rules are grounded on an insufficient analysis 

 of the inductive process. Such, however, will be seen to be 

 the fact, as soon as it is considered, that Bacon entirely over- 

 looked Plurality of Causes. All his rules tacitly imply the 

 assumption, so contrary to all we now know of nature, that a 

 phenomenon cannot have more than one cause. 



When he is inquiring into what he terms the forma calidi 

 autfrigidi, gravis aut levis, sicci aut humidi, and the like, he 

 never for an instant doubts that there is some one thing, some 

 invariable condition or set of conditions, which is present in 

 all cases of heat, or cold, or whatever other phenomenon he is 

 considering; the only difficulty being to find what it is; 

 which accordingly he tries to do by a process of elimination, 



* Novum Organum, Aph. 75. 



