vi INQUIRY AND INTERPRETATION 133 



Francis Bacon is sometimes called the Father of 

 Experimental Philosophy, but it may be doubted 

 whether he merits the title ; indeed, he disregarded 

 in his own works the very principles of scientific inves- 

 tigation expounded by them. What Bacon did was to 

 form into a system the method of investigation which 

 consists in asking questions of Nature herself, of making 

 observations with great care, carefully arranging them, 

 and cautiously arriving at conclusions from them. 

 Aristotle had long before insisted upon the collection 

 of facts, and urged that we must " first classify them, 

 bring particular facts under general heads and co- 

 ordinate them into theories." He collected so-called 

 " facts " by hundreds, and proceeded to speculate upon 

 them as if they were unalterable truths, whereas in many 

 cases they were merely old women's tales or other 

 hearsay evidence. His method was a logical machine 

 which could produce reasonable results when provided 

 with sound material to work upon, but not otherwise. 

 Aristotle and the school of thought he dominated for 

 nearly two thousand years, knew nothing of the experi- 

 mental method of inquiry ; and by proclaiming that 

 " our only hope is in the regeneration of the sciences 

 by regularly raising them on the foundation of experi- 

 ence " Bacon became the apostle of a new school of 

 philosophy, though not the founder of it. 



Bacon's influence in establishing this inductive 

 process of inquiry is often over-estimated, and he 

 owes his prominence to the fact that his works 

 appeared at the right psychological moment, when 

 the age was ripe to receive a new philosophy. As 

 we have seen, three centuries before the time of 

 Francis Bacon, the main doctrines he promulgated 

 had been proclaimed by Roger Bacon, and not only 



