8sct. ii.] DISSERTATION SECOND. 87 



exist, must be an object of admiration to all succeeding 

 ages. He is destined, if, indeed, any thing in the world 

 be so destined, to remain an instantia singularis among 

 men, and as he has had no rival in the times which are 

 past, so is he likely to have none in those which are to 

 come. Before any parallel to him can be found, not only 

 must a man of the same talents be produced, but he must 

 be placed in the same circumstances : the memory of his 

 predecessor must be effaced, and the light of science, after 

 being entirely extinguished, must be again beginning to re- 

 vive. If a second Bacon is ever to arise, he must be ig- 

 norant of the first. 



Bacon is often compared with two great men who lived 

 nearly about the same time with himself, and who were 

 both eminent reformers of philosophy, Descartes and Ga- 

 lileo. 



Descartes flourished about forty years later than Bacon, 

 but does not seem to have been acquainted with his writ- 

 ings. Like him, however, he was forcibly struck with 

 the defects of the ancient philosophy, and the total inapti- 

 tude of the methods which it followed, for all the purposes 

 of physical investigation. Like him, too, he felt himself 

 strongly impelled to undertake the reformation of this er- 

 roneous system ; but the resemblance between them goes 

 no farther ; for it is impossible that two men could pur- 

 sue the same end by methods more diametrically oppo- 

 site. 



Descartes never proposed to himself any thing which 

 had the least resemblance to induction. He began with 

 establishing principles, and from the existence of the Deity 

 and his perfections, he proposed to deduce the explanation 

 of all the phenomena of the world, by reasoning a priori- 

 Instead of proceeding upward from the effect to the cause, 

 he proceeded continually downward from the cause to the 



