U»4 ADDITIONS. 



CHAPTER III. 



Failure of the Greek Physical Philosophy, 



Francis Bacon's Remarks. 



THOUGH we do uot accept, as authority, even the judgments of 

 Francis Bacon, and shall have to estimate the strong and the 

 weak parts of his, no less than of other philosophies, we shall find his 

 remarks on the Greek philosophers very instructive. Thus he says of 

 Aristotle (Nov. Org. 1. Aph. lxiii.) : 



" He is an example of the kind of philosophy in which much is 

 made out of little ; so that the basis of experience is too narrow. He 

 corrupted Natural Philosophy by his Logic, and made the world out 

 of his Categories. He disposed of the distinction of dense and rare, by 

 which bodies occupy more or less dimensious or space, by the frigid 

 distinction of act and power. He assigned to each kind of body a single 

 proper motion, so that if they have any other motion they must re- 

 ceive it from some extraneous source ; and imposed many other arbi- 

 trary rules upon Nature ; being everywhere more careful how one may 

 give a ready answer, and make a positive assertion, than how he may 

 apprehend the variety of nature. 



" And this appears most evidently by the comparison of his philoso- 

 phy with the other philosophies which had any vogue in Greece. For 

 the Homoiomeria} of Anaxagoras, the Atoms of Leucippus and Democ- 

 ritus, the Heaven and Earth of Parmenicles, the Love and Hate of 

 Empedocles, the Fire of Heraclitus, had some trace of the thoughts of 

 a natural philosopher; some savor of experience, and nature, and 

 buddy things; while the Physics of Aristotle, in general, sound only 

 of Logical Terms. 



" Nor let any one be moved by this — that in his books Of Animals, 

 and in his Problems, and in others of his tracts, there is often a quoting 

 of experiments. For he had made up his mind beforehand ; and did 

 not consult experience in order to make right propositions and axioms, 

 but when he had settled his system to his will, he twisted experience 



1 For these technical forms of the Greeks, see Sec. 3 of this chapter. 



