OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 105 



to be, fulfilled, with a promptness and liberality 

 which even its illustrious author in his most sanguine 

 mood would have hardly ventured to anticipate. 



(97.) Previous to the publication of the Novum 

 Organum of Bacon, natural philosophy, in any 

 legitimate and extensive sense of the word, could 

 hardly be said to exist. Among the Greek phi- 

 losophers, of whose attainments in science alone, 

 in the earlier ages of the world, we have any posi- 

 tive knowledge, and that but a very limited one, 

 we are struck with the remarkable contrast be- 

 tween their powers of acute and subtle disput- 

 ation, their extraordinary success in abstract rea- 

 soning, and their intimate familiarity with subjects 

 purely intellectual, on the one hand ; and, on the 

 other, with their loose and careless consideration 

 of external nature, their grossly illogical deduc- 

 tions of principles of sweeping generality from 

 few and ill-observed facts, in some cases ; and their 

 reckless assumption of abstract principles having 

 no foundation but in their own imaginations, in 

 others; mere forms of words, with nothing cor- 

 responding to them in nature, from which, as from 

 mathematical definitions, postulates, and axioms, 

 they imagined that all phenomena could be de- 

 rived, all the laws of nature deduced. Thus, for 

 instance, having settled it in their own minds, that 

 a circle is the most perfect of figures, they con- 

 cluded, of course, that the movements of the heavenly 

 bodies must all be performed in exact circles, and 

 with uniform motions ; and when the plainest ob- 

 servation demonstrated the contrary, instead of 

 doubting the principle, they saw no better way of 



