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of science being thus determined, it only remained for 

 Bacon to discuss the method. He pointed out that 

 traditional authority had proved an inadequate 

 guide, and insisted again, as Aristotle had done, that 

 observation must furnish the principles of every 

 science ; he went on to lay down a rule that no 

 hypothesis should be framed until vast numbers of 

 observations, unconnected by any syntax, should 

 have been made and tabulated ; and lastly he empha- 

 sised the necessity of testing every hypothesis by 

 furthur observation, and, whenever possible, by 

 experiment, that is to say, by observation under 

 carefully arranged conditions. Although he nowhere 

 states the grounds of his belief, Bacon evidently did 

 believe that if his method were closely followed, 

 the hypotheses which had stood the prescribed tests 

 would correspond with the divine decrees for which 

 he sought. He despised the Copernican astronomy 

 which did not purport to reveal such a decree, and he 

 wrote of Copernicus as " a man who thinks nothing 

 of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided 

 his calculations turn out well," a sentence which at 

 once exposes Bacon's failure to appreciate the neces- 

 sity that a scientific syntax should be the simplest 

 and most direct whereby the mind can combine the 

 given data. 



A passage in " Paradise Lost," VIII., 76-84, 

 seems to show that Milton, while he held the same 

 opinion as Bacon regarding the aim of science, yet 



