THE PARASCEVE. 387 



carried out completely on the plan he proposed, or attain com- 

 pletely the end at which he aimed ; and certainly, if I thought 

 that such completeness was a condition absolutely essential, 

 that, unless observation could be carried on without any help 

 whatever from theory, the work could not proceed at all ; or 

 that the results of observation so conducted could be of no 

 scientific value unless they amounted to a perfect " transcript 

 of nature ; " - if I thought, in short, it was a scheme which, 

 unless it led to everything, would lead to nothing, I should 

 accept these remarks as disposing finally of the whole question. 

 But why should I think so? That the severance of theory 

 and observation should be absolute does not appear to me to be 

 at all necessary for the practical prosecution of the enterprise ; 

 I can hardly think that it even formed part of the original de- 

 sign ; and though it is true that the collection of natural history 

 could not have been used in the way Bacon proposed) unless it 

 were more complete than it ever could have been made, yet 

 for use in the ordinary way (and this was certainly one of the 

 uses he contemplated for it) its value would be increased by 

 every new observation ; and who can say at what point ob- 

 servations so conducted must necessarily stop ? 



That Bacon intended one set of men to be employed in col- 

 lecting facts, and another in deriving consequences from them, 

 is no doubt true. Unless theory and observation could be so 

 far separated as to admit practically of such a distribution of 

 parts, his plan must no doubt have been given up ; and it is 

 objected that this distribution is practically impossible, because 

 the observers, unless they had some precedent theory to guide 

 them, could never know what observations to make in order to 

 bring out the facts which the theorist requires to know. I 

 cannot but think, however, that this objection supposes a sepa- 

 ration of the two functions far more complete than Bacon ever 

 contemplated. He may have used words which in strict logical 

 construction imply such a kind of separation ; but if so, his 

 words meant more than he himself meant. His intellect was 

 remarkable for breadth rather than subtlety, quicker, to use 

 his own division, in perceiving resemblances than distinctions, 

 and in writing he always aimed at conciseness, force, point, 

 picturesqueness, and at making himself plain to common 

 understandings, far more than at metaphysical exactness of 

 expression. Now, however true it may be, as a metaphysical 

 proposition, that some amount of theory is involved in every 



