THE PARASCEVE. 371 



it is written, that of a familiar conversation between two 

 friends, happened to be the most convenient for the business 

 I was then about ; and as I could not present the argument 

 more clearly in any other, I leave it as it is. 



A. 



Before you go on I wish you would satisfy me on one point, upon 

 which I have hitherto sought satisfaction in vain. What after all 

 was it that Bacon did for philosophy ? In what did the wonder and 

 in what did the benefit consist ? I know that people have all agreed 

 to call him the Father of the Inductive Philosophy ; and I know that 

 the sciences made a great start about his time and have in some 

 departments made great progress since. But I could never yet hear 

 what one thing he discovered that would not have been discovered 

 just as soon without his help. It is admitted that he was not for- 

 tunate in any of his attempts to apply his principles to practice. It 

 is admitted that no actual scientific discovery of importance was 

 made by him. Well, he might be the father of discovery for all that. 

 But among all the important scientific discoveries which have been 

 made by others since his time, is there any one that can be traced to 

 his teaching? traced to any principles of scientific investigation 

 originally laid down by him, and by no other man before him or 

 contemporary with him ? I know very well that he did lay down a 

 great many just principles; principles which must have been acted 

 upon by every man that ever pursued the study of Nature with 

 success. But what of that ? It does not follow that we owe these 

 principles to him. For I have no doubt that I myself, I that 

 cannot tell how we know that the earth goes round, or why an apple 

 falls or why the antipodes do not fall, I have no doubt (I say) that 

 if I sat down to devise a course of investigation for the determination 

 of these questions, I should discover a great many just principles 

 which Herschel and Faraday must hereafter act upon, as they have 

 done heretofore. Nay if I should succeed in setting them forth more 

 exactly, concisely, impressively, and memorably, than any one has 

 yet done, they might soon come to be called my principles. But if 

 that were all, I should have done little or nothing for the advance- 

 ment of science. I should only have been finding for some of its 

 processes a better name. I want to know whether Bacon did any- 

 thing more than this ; and if so, what. In what did the principles 

 laid down by him essentially differ from those on which (while he was 

 thus labouring to expound them) Galileo was already acting ? From 

 all that I can hear, it seems evident that the Inductive Philosophy 

 received its great impulse, not from the great prophet of new prin- 

 ciples, but from the great discoverers of new facts ; not from Bacon, 



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