FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 373 



naturalium generationern aut transformationem*." 

 The grand distinction in the ancient philosophy, 

 between natural and violent motions, though not 

 without a plausible foundation in the appearances 

 themselves, was doubtless 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 con- 

 struct, has been turned to so little direct use by subse- 

 quent 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 notjunfrequently remarked, 

 has scarcely received any plausible explanation; and 

 some, indeed, have preferred to assert that all rules 

 of induction are useless, rather than suppose that 

 Bacon's rules are grounded upon an insufficient ana- 

 lysis of the inductive process. Such, however, will 

 be seen to be the fact, as soon as it is considered, 

 that Bacon entirely overlooked Plurality of Causes. 

 All his rules tacitly imply the assumption, so con- 

 trary to all we now know of nature, that a pheno- 

 menon cannot have more than one cause. 



When Bacon is inquiring into what he terms the 

 forma calidi aut frigidi, gravls aut levis, sicci aut 

 humidi, and the like, he never for an instant doubts 

 that there is some one thing, some invariable condi- 

 tion or set of conditions, which is present in all cases 



* Novum Organum, Aph. 75. 



