60 



GENERAL PREFACE TO 



conditions before mentioned are present, they are not accom- 

 panied by the required phenomenon. By these two classes of 

 observations all the superfluous conditions may be rejected, 

 and those which remain are what we seek. Wherever we can 

 determine their existence we can produce the phenomenon in 

 question. 



This process is what Bacon calls, in Valerius Terminus,, the 

 freeing of a direction, and in his later writings the investigation 

 of the Form. 



His thinking that this process would in all cases, or even 

 generally, be successful, arose from his not having sufficiently 

 appreciated the infinite variety and complexity of Nature. Thus 

 he strongly condemns as most false and pernicious the common 

 opinion that the number of individual phenomena to be observed 

 is sensibly infinite, and commends Democritus (a commendation 

 which seems rather to belong to Lucretius) for having perceived 

 that the appearance of limitless variety which the first aspect of 

 Nature presents to us disappears on a closer inspection. 



The transition from this view of Nature to the idea that it 

 was possible to form an alphabet of the universe, and to analyse 

 all phenomena into their real elements, is manifestly easy. 



By the new method of induction it would be possible to 

 ascertain the conditions requisite and sufficient for the produc~ 

 tion of any phenomenon ; and as this determination was meant 

 chiefly to enable us to imitate Nature, or rather- to direct her 

 operations, Bacon was naturally led to assume that the con- 

 ditions in question would be such that it would in all cases be 

 possible to produce them artificially. Now the power of man 

 is limited to the relations of space. He brings bodies together, 

 he separates them ; but Nature must do the rest. On the other 

 hand the conditions of the existence of any phenomenon must 

 be something which inheres more closely in the essence of the 

 substance by which that phenomenon is exhibited than the 

 phenomenon itself. And this something is clearly the inward 

 configuration of the substance ; that is, the form and arrangement 

 &c. of its ultimate particles. Whiteness, for instance, depends 

 on an even arrangement of these particles in space ; and herein 

 we perceive a perfect analogy between what man can do and 

 what Nature requires to be done. The familiar processes of the 

 arts consist simply in giving particular forms to portions of 

 matter, in arranging tl em and setting them in motion according 



