DISTKIBUTION OF THE WORK. 13 



But the more difficult part of our task consists in the form 

 of induction, and the judgment to be made by it ; for that 

 form of the logicians which proceeds by simple enumeration, 

 is a childish thing, concludes unsafely, lies open to con- 

 tradictory instances, and regards only common matters ; yet 

 determines nothing : whilst the sciences require such a form 

 of induction, as can separate, adjust, and verify experience, 

 and come to a necessary determination by proper exclusions 

 and rejections. 



Nor is this all ; for we likewise lay the foundations of the 

 sciences stronger and closer, and begin our inquiries deeper 

 than men have hitherto done, bringing those things to the 

 test which the common logic has taken upon trust. The 

 logicians borrow the principles of the sciences from the 

 sciences themselves, venerate the first notions of the mind, 

 and acquiesce in the immediate informations of the senses, 

 when rightly disposed; but we judge, that a real logic should 

 enter every province of the sciences with a greater authority 



schemata are resolvable into propositions, and propositions into words, 

 which, as he says, are but the tokens and signs of things. Now if 

 these first notions, which are as it were the soul of words and the basis 

 of eveiy philosophic fabric, be hastily abstracted from things, andvaguw 

 and not clearly defined and limited, the whole structure, whethef 

 erected by induction or deduction, or both, as is most frequently the 

 case, must fall to the ground. The error, therefore, does not lie in the 

 deductive mode of proof, without which physical science could never 

 advanco beyond its empirical stage, but in clothing this method 

 in the vulgar language of the day, and reasoning upon its terms as if 

 they pointed at some fact or antithesis in nature, instead of pre- 

 viously testing the accuracy of such expressions by experiment and 

 observation. As such notions are more general than the individual 

 cases out of which they arise, it follows that this inquiry must be made 

 through the medium of induction, and the essential mei'it of Eacon lies 

 in framing a system of rules by which this ascending scale of inference 

 may be secured from error. As the neglect of this important prelimi- 

 nary to scientific investigation vitiated all the Aristotelian physics, and 

 kept the human mind stationary for two thousand years, hardly toe 

 much praise can be conferred upon the philosopher who not only pointed 

 out the gap but supplied the materials for its obliteration. The ardency 

 of his nature, however, urged him to extremes, and he confounded the 

 accuracy of the deductive method with the straw and stubble on which 

 it attempted to erect a system of physics. In censuring intermediate 

 propositions, Bacon appears to have been unaware that he was con* 

 uenvning the only forms through which reason or inference caja manifest 

 ivssii, and lecturing mankind on the futility of an inpt2'aiuent which h« 

 \vi«8 employing in every page of bis book. £«L 



