482 KOVUM OJlGAlltfSL [boos H 



mineral, water, or oil, or air, or any other substance whatever 

 susceptible of such motion. Sensible heat is the same, but con- 

 sidered relatively to the senses. Let us now proceed to further 

 helps. 



XXI. After our tables of first review, our rejection or exclu- 

 sive table, and the first vintage derived from them, we must 

 advance to the remaining helps of the understanding with regard 

 to the interpretation of nature, and a true and perfect induc- 

 tion, in offering which we will take the examples of cold and 

 heat where tables are necessary, but where fewer instances are 

 required, we will go through a variety of others, so as neither to 

 confound investigation nor to narrow our doctrine. 



In the first place, therefore, we will treat of prerogative in- 

 stances;" 2. Of the supports of induction ; 3. Of the correction 

 of induction ; 4. Of varying the investigation according to the 



By this term Bacon understands general phenomena, taken in order 

 from the great mass of indiscriminative facts, which, as they lie in 

 nature, are apt to generate confusion by their number, indistinctness, 

 and complication. Such classes of phenomena, as being peculiarly 

 suggestive of causation, he quaintly classes under the title of prerogative 

 inquiries, either seduced by the fanciful analogy, which such instances 

 bore to the prerogativa centuria in the Roman Comitia, or justly con- 

 sidering them as Herschell supposes to hold a kind of prerogative dig- 

 nity from being peculiarly suggestive of causation. 



Two high authorities in physical science (v, Herschell, Nat. Phil, 

 art. 192 ; Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. p. 243) 

 pronounce these instances of little service in the task of induction, 

 being for the most part classed not according to the ideas which they 

 involve, or to any obvious circumstance in the facts of which they 

 consist, but according to the extent and manner of their influence upon 

 the inquiry in which they are employed. Thus we have solitary in- 

 stances, migrating instances, ostensive instances, clandestine instances, 

 so termed according to the degree in which they exhibit, or seem to ex- 

 hibit, the property, whose nature we would examine. We have guide- 

 post instances, crucial instances, instances of the parted road, of the door- 

 way, of tlie lamp, according to the guidance they supply to our advance. 

 Whewell remarks that such a classitieation is much of the same nature as 

 if, having to teach the art of building, we were to describe tools with 

 reference to the amount and place of the work which they nmst do, 

 instead of pointing out tiieir construction and use ; as if we were to inform 

 the pupil that we must have tools for lifting a stone up, tools for moving 

 it side- ways, tools for laying it square, and tools for cementing it firmly. 

 The means are thus lost in the end, and we reap the fruits of imme- 

 thodical arrangement in the confusion of cross division. In addition, 

 all the instances are leavened with the error of confounding the lawa 

 with the causes of phenomena, and we are urged to adopt the fumhi* 

 mental error of seeking therein the universal agents, or general causes 

 of phenomena, without ascending the gradual steps of intermediatf 

 laws. Ed. 



