Notice of British Naturalists. 221 



important and interesting it may be in its peculiar features, we 

 are apt to neglect and overlook. That which is rare, and is sel- 

 dom observed, excites an active investigation. And thus it was 

 that the philosophers of old, in their pursuit of natural science, ap- 

 plied their chief attention to phenomena, and left the more general 

 laws of physics uninvestigated. Nobody sought to know why 

 a stone falls to the ground ; why smoke ascends ; or why the stars 

 revolve around the earth ; while the discovery of a double-head- 

 ed snake, or a deformed bird, excited the warmest interest, and 

 the approach of an African seal to the shores of Europe, revived 

 the fable of a mermaid. But the natural consequence of this 

 neglect of common, and of minute attention to the extraordinary 

 occurrences, was to render it impossible to establish any general 

 or useful principles, and still further, to deduce any general laws. 

 It is a beneficial rule of the Creator, that that which is in nature 

 most truly valuable, should be the easiest of access ; and it is in 

 the properties of such things as exist familiarly around us, that 

 we must look for the explanation of what seldom occurs. 



To quote again from Bacon, in a passage which contains the 

 germ of much of his Novum Organum : " So it cometh often to 

 pass, that mean and small things discover great, better than great 

 can discover the small : and therefore Aristotle noteth well, ' that 

 the nature of every thing is best seen in its smallest portions,' 

 and for that cause he inquire th the nature of a commonwealth, 

 first in a family, and the simple conjugations of man and wife, 

 parent and child, master and servant, which are in every cottage. 

 Even so likewise, the nature of this great city of the world, and 

 the policy thereof, must be first sought in mean concordances and 

 small portions. So we see how that secret of nature, of the turn- 

 ing of iron touched with the loadstone towards the north, was 

 found out in needles of iron, and not in bars of iron." 



Notwithstanding, however, this well merited compliment to 

 the Aristotelian philosophy, as regards Natural Science^ this 

 course is imperfect and deceptive. It has culled a few from a 

 great many things ; it has taken its principles from common expe- 

 rience, and without due attention to the evidence or precise nature 

 of the facts ; the philosopher is left to work out the rest from his 

 own invention. 



Like Luther before him, his great predecessor in the work of 

 reform, although in another sphere, Bacon bore a strong enmity 



