Nov. 1, 1888] 



NATURE 



(similar in its aims and methods to Gresham's College, and 

 by no means similar to Mr. Goschen's Lecture Society) 

 forthcoming as the result of the deliberations of the 

 Royal Commission now sitting to consider the question 

 if the future University of London — the present repre- 

 ntatives of Gresham's trustees would be willing and 

 : \ious to redeem the past by endowing in that Univer- 

 sity seven or more Gresham Professorships, with a sum 

 representing in adequate degree the property long ago 

 misappropriated by their predecessors. Sir Thomas 

 (iresham, the greatest and most generous of merchants 

 \\ ho ever desired to benefit the City where he lived and 

 ospered, the man who, above all others, has been most 

 uimefully betrayed by those whom he trusted and loaded 

 with gifts, may yet be honoured and justly dealt with. 

 It rests with the Corporation of London, and the Wor- 

 shipful Company of Mercers, to give to the future Uni- 

 versity of London, Gresham's name and Gresham's 

 'noney. E. Ray Lank ester. 



BACON. 



con. By R. W. Church, Dean of St. Paul's. (London : 

 [acmillan and Co., 1888.) 



'HE handsome volume before us, which forms the 

 fifth volume of Dean Church's collected works, is 

 'print (with, apparently, few or no alterations) of the 

 iall book on " Bacon," which originally appeared in 

 r. Morley's series of '" English Men of Letters." Like 

 [''ery literary composition which falls from the pen of its 

 author, it is a model of candour in treatment, and of 

 gracefulness in style. Other accounts of Bacon may be 

 more profound, more detailed, or more appreciative, but 

 certainly none is likely to be more interesting or attractive 

 to the general reader. 



The early chapters, constituting the larger portion of 

 the book, are occupied with Bacon's life, and therefore, 

 by implication, with the^never-ceasing controversy about 

 Ms character, conduct, and motives. On these topics, 

 can Church's judgment decidedly inclines to the side 

 oi severity ; nor does he, as it seems to us, make sufficient 

 allowance for the temptations to which Bacon was ex- 

 posed, arising largely from his financial embarrassments, 

 the peculiarly difficult positions in which, as in the case 

 of Essex, he was sometimes placed, or the habits and 

 icumstances, so different in many respects from our 

 vn, of the times and circles in which he lived. At the 

 same time, the sentence, however decisive, is always 

 delivered in kindly and gentle tones, as that of a judge 

 "'ho regrets, rather than denounces, the fauUs which he 

 iidemns. The judgments of Dean Church, even when 

 J regard them as erroneous, always demand our atten- 

 in, and perhaps all the more so, because they are 

 itirely free from the asperity and ferocity of tone 

 which mark the utterances of some others of Bacon's 

 more recent critics. 



But our business is not so much with the chapters on 

 icon's life and character as with the chapter on his 

 philosophy. Here Dr. Church mainly follows the lead 

 of M. de Rdmusat, and consequently his account, though 

 reflective and suggestive, and often singularly felicitous 

 in e-xpression, appears to us to be wanting in the definite- 

 ness and precision which are requisite in the estimate 



of a philosophical or lojica) system. He does not, for 

 instance, bring out with sufficient emphasis the fact that 

 Bacon was what in our own days we should call, not a 

 philosopher, but a logician. His mission, as Bacon himself 

 conceived it, was to bring about a thorough reform in the 

 method of science, and through this new method to 

 reconstitute, or, rather, to enable others to reconstitute, 

 from their very foundations, the whole circle of the 

 sciences — moral, mental, and political, as well as what 

 are more strictly called natural. The inductive method 

 was not conceived of by Bacon as antagonistic to the 

 deductive method, but as its necessary antecedent and 

 complement. Nor did he regard himself, nor would it 

 be right to regard him, as the inventor of the inductive 

 method, any more than Aristotle regarded himself, or it 

 would be right to regard him, as the inventor of the 

 deductive method. What both philosophers alike did, 

 was to analyze, classify, and discriminate, with a view to 

 distinguish between correct and incorrect reasoning, the 

 methods of natural logic already in use. Only, while 

 Aristotle performed 'this work effectively, and, consider- 

 ing the time at which he taught, with marvellous elabor- 

 ation, for the syllogistic logic, he did little more than 

 point out the existence and necessity of induction. This 

 want of rules and of a sufficient analysis of the inductive 

 side of reasoning easily accounts for the utterly unscien- 

 tific character of the inductions with which men ordinarily 

 satisfied themselves throughout the Classical and Middle 

 Ages. What really constituted the most distinctive 

 feature in Bacon's conception of a reformed logic was 

 the profound idea that induction, instead of being the 

 loose, vague, and uncertain process which was then in 

 vogue, admitted of being presented with the force of 

 demonstration, and thereby, if the facts on which it was 

 founded were true, of supplying as firm a basis for the 

 premises, as the premises, if they were true, supplied 

 for the conclusion of the syllogism. " Inductionem enim 

 censemus eam esse demonstrandi formam, qua; sensum 

 tuetur et naturam premit et operibus imminet ac fere 

 immiscetur" (" Distributio Operis "). " Verum ad hujus 

 inductionis, sive demonstrationis, instructionem bonam et 

 legitimam quamplurima adhibendasunt,qua3 adhuc nullius 

 mortalium cogitationem subiere ; adeo ut in ea major sit 

 consumenda opera, quam adhuc consumpta est in syllo- 

 gismo" (" Novum Organum," Book L Aph. 105). Thus 

 it is hardly an exaggeration to say that inductive logic — 

 that is, the systematic analysis and arrangement of 

 inductive evidence, as distinct from the natural induction 

 which all men practise — was almost as much the creation 

 of Bacon as deductive logic was that of Aristotle. Dean 

 Church rightly calls attention to the wide interval which 

 separates Bacon's " Tables of Instances " from the 

 experimental methods of Mr. Mill ; but the latter are, after 

 all, only a corrected version of the former, and, his- 

 torically, were derived from them through the medium of 

 Sir John Herschel's discourse on " The Study of Natural 

 Philosophy." Moreover, it is remarkable that the two 

 divisions of the "Instantiae Solitariae," described in 

 "Nov. Org.," Book II., Aph. 22, correspond respectively 

 with Mill's " Methods of Agreement and Difference," 

 and that the very words " method of agreement " and 

 " method of difference " all but occur in the text. For 

 these ahd many similar reasons, we certainly cannot 



