ch v.] THE TWO METHODS. 113 



have not really succeeded in taking away one jot or tittle of 

 his rightful fame. In point of fact it was not Bacon's great 

 merit, but his great deficiency, that he held in comparatively 

 slight esteem the deductive method. This method is as 

 trustworthy and as powerful as the inductive, provided it 

 starts from verified premises, and ends by verifying its 

 conclusions. Indeed in several of the sciences induction 

 plays a quite subordinate part. Mathematics, mechanics and 

 astronomy (so far, at least, as relates to the dynamics of the 

 solar system) are almost purely deductive sciences, and in 

 the chief problems of biology and political economy deduc- 

 tion is predominant. It was chiefly through deduction that 

 Newton reached the law of gravitation, that Harvey 

 discovered the circulation of the blood, that Goethe arrived 

 at his grand generalizations concerning animal and vegetal 

 morphology, and that Adam Smith obtained the fundamental 

 principles of political economy, These facts are well known 

 to Bacon's adversaries, who remind us also that, unlike 

 Descartes, he never made any discoveries himself, and who 

 further assert, with some exaggeration, that he never even 

 worked out a scheme of induction which could be adopted 

 and utilized by subsequent thinkers. It is true that Bacon 

 never mastered any one science, as Descartes and Leibnitz 

 mastered mathematics. Knowing little of mathematics he 

 underrated the deductive method, which moreover had not 

 yet been illustrated by the splendid triumphs of astronomy 

 and physiology, and which to his mind was chiefly exemplified 

 in what seemed to him the barren word-battles of the 

 scholastic metaphysicians. It is also true that Bacon did 

 not construct a thorough system of inductive logic whereby 

 to illustrate his method. That great achievement was 

 reserved for Comte and Mill ; and indeed would have been 

 utterly impossible at any time before the present century, 

 during which the methods of the two chief inductive sciences, 

 chemistry and molecular physics, have first been practically 



VOL. I. I 



