FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 409 



Bacon entirely overlooked Plurality of Causes. All his rules tacitly 

 imply the assumption, so contrary to all we now know of natui'e, that 

 a phenomenon cannot have more tlian one cause. 



When Bacon is inquiring into what he terms the forma calidi aut 

 frigidi, gravis aut Ici'is, sicci aut hunndi, and tlic like, he never lor an 

 instant doubts that there is some one thing, some invariable condition 

 or set of conditions, wliich is present in all cases of heat, or of cold, or 

 of whatever other phenomenon he is considering ; tiic only ditiiculty 

 being to find what it is ; which accorduigly he tries to do by a process 

 of elimination, rejecting or excluding, by negative instances, whatever 

 is not the Jonna or cause, in order to arrive at what is. Jiut, tliat this 

 forma or cause is one thing, and that it is the same in all hot objects, 

 he has no more doubt of, than another person has that tliere is always 

 some cause or other. In the present state of knowledge it could not 

 be necessary, even if we had not already treated so fully of the question, 

 to point out how widely this supjiosition is at variance with the truth. 

 It is particularly unfortunate for Bacon that, falling into this error, he 

 should have fixed almost exclusively upon a class of inquiries in which 

 it was particularly fatal ; namely, incjuiries into the causes of the 

 sensible qualities of objects. For his assumption, groundless in every 

 case, is false in a peculiar degree with respect to those sensible quali- 

 ties. In regard to scarcely any of them has it been found possible to 

 trace any unity of cause, any set of conditions invariably accompanying 

 the quality. The conjunctions of such qualities with one another 

 constitute the vai'iety of Kinds, in ^vhich, as already remarked, it has 

 not been found possible to trace any law. Bacon was seeking for 

 what did not exist. The phenomenon of which he sought for the one 

 cause has oftenest no cause at all, and when it has, depends (as far as 

 hitherto ascertained) upon an unassignable variety of distinct causes. 



And upon this rock every one must split, who, like Bacon, repre- 

 sents to himself as the first and fundamental problem of science to 

 ascertain what is the cause of a given effect, rather than what are the 

 effects of a given cause. It was shown, in an early stage of our in- 

 quiry into the nature of Induction,* how much more ample are the 

 resources wliich science commands for the latter than for the former 

 inquiry, since it is upon the latter only that we can throw any direct 

 light by means of experiment ; the power of artificially producing an 

 effect, implying a previous knowledge of at least one of its causes. If 

 we discover the causes of effects, it is generally by having previously 

 discovered the effects of causes : the greatest skill in devising crucial 

 instances for the former purpose may only end, as Bacon's physical 

 inquiries did, in no result at all. Was it that his eagerness to acquire 

 the power of producing for man's benefit effects of practical importance 

 to human life, rendering him impatient of pursuing that end by a cir- 

 cuitous route, made even him, the champion of experiment, prefer the 

 direct mode, though one of mere ob-servation, to the indirect, in which 

 alone experiment was possible? Or had even Bacon not entirely 

 cleared his mind from the notion of the ancients, that " rerum cognos- 

 cere cau.saa'" was the sole object of j)hilosophy, and that to inquire into 

 the effects of things belonged to servile and mechanical arts? 



It is worth remarking that, whiU; the only efficient mode of cultivating 



♦ Supra, p. 221, 



