46 GENERAL PREFACE TO 



Plato, that his discourse was but dotage, might fitly be applied 

 to them all. 1 



It cannot be denied, that to Bacon all sound philosophy 

 \ s) I seemed to be included in what we now call the natural sciences ; 

 Y <w an< ^ W ^ **" s v i ew ne was naturally led to prefer the atomic 

 doctrine of Democritus to any metaphysical speculation. Every 

 atomic theory is an attempt to explain some of the phenomena 

 of matter by means of others ; to explain secondary qualities by 

 means of the primary. And this was what Bacon himself pro- 

 posed to do in investigating the Forms of simple natures. 

 Nevertheless he did not adopt the peculiar opinions of De- 

 mocritus and his followers. In the Novum Organum he rejects 

 \ altogether the notion of a vacuum and that of the unchange- 



^ ableness of matter. 2 His theory of the intimate constTfuHon 

 ^^^gj^gr^ ^ 



or bodies does not, he remarks, relate to atoms properly so 

 called, but only to the actually existing ultimate particles. 

 Bacon cannot therefore be said to be a follower of Demo- 

 critus, though he has spoken of him as being, of all the Greek 

 philosophers, the one who had the deepest insight into nature. 3 



But though Bacon was not an atomist, he was what has been 

 called a mechanical physiologist. Leibnitz's remark that the 

 restorers of philosophy 4 all held the principle that the properties 

 of bodies are to be explained by means of magnitude, figure, and 

 motion (a statement which envelopes every such theory of 

 matter as that of Descartes, together with the old atomic doc- 

 trine), is certainly true of Bacon. 



(14.) The opinion which Bacon had formed as to the class of 

 subjects which ought to be included in Summary Philosophy (the 

 English phrase by which he renders the expression he some- 

 times uses, namely prima philosophia), is worthy of attention. 



In the writings of Aristotle, the first philosophy denotes the 

 ... *~~ j- ~-^" <* 



science which since his time has been callecTmetaphysics. It is 

 the science of first principles, or as he has himself defined it, 

 the science of that which is, as such. In the first book of the 

 Metaphysics we find a proof of the necessity of having such a 

 science, distinct from and in a manner superior to all others. 

 Bacon, adopting Aristotle's name, applied it differently. "With 



1 Redargut. Phil, et Nov. Org. i. 71. 



2 Nov. Org. ii. 8. Compare Cogit. De Nat. Rerum. 

 1 Nov. Org. i. 51.; also Farm. Teles, and Dem. PbiL 



* Namely, the Cartesians, Verulam, Hobbes, &c. See his letter to Thomasius^ 

 p. 48. of the edition of his philosophical works by Erdmann. 



