220 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



If genius, indeed, be that by which intellect diverges from 

 what is common, it must necessarily be a phenomenon be- 

 yond the domain of the ordinary laws of nature. Never- 

 theless, it is always an interesting arid instructive work 

 to trace out, as far as possible, the characteristics of mind 

 by which great discoveries have been achieved, and we 

 shall find in the analysis much to illustrate the principles 

 of scientific method. 



Error of the Baconian Method. 



Hundreds of investigators may be constantly engaged 

 in experimental inquiry : they may compile numberless 

 notebooks full of scientific facts, and may frame endless 

 tables full of numerical results ; but if the views of the 

 nature of induction here maintained be true they can 

 never by such work alone rise to new and great dis- 

 coveries. By an organized system of research they may 

 work out deductively the detailed results of a previous 

 discovery, but to arrive at a new principle of nature is 

 another matter. Francis Bacon contributed to spread 

 abroad the hurtful notion that to advance science we 

 must begin by accumulating facts, and then draw from 

 them, by a process of patient digestion, successive laws of 

 higher and higher generality. In protesting against the 

 false method of the scholastic logicians, he exaggerated 

 a partially true philosophy, until it became almost as 

 false as that which preceded it. His notion of scientific 

 method was that of a kind of scientific bookkeeping. Facts 

 were to be indiscriminately gathered from every source, 

 and posted in a kind of ledger, from which would emerge 

 in time a clear balance of truth. It is difficult to imagine 

 a less likely way of arriving at great discoveries. 



The greater the array of facts, the less is the probability 

 that they will by any routine system of classification or 



