PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF LORD BACON. 389 



merit of some branches of physics was already in part begun ; 

 but there was no general agreement as to the rules of inquiry. 

 The truths which Bacon taught are now, it is true, known, 

 and their authority acknowledged by all ; but this was far 

 from being the case in the early part of the seventeenth 

 century. One of the most intelligent of his friends, Sir Tho- 

 mas Bodley, to whose judgment he submitted an ear]y sketch 

 of his plan, appears to have been wholly unable to distin- 

 guish between the loose procedure of the Empirics and that 

 regulated procedure which it recommends. " As for that," 

 says he, " which you inculcate of a knowledge more excellent 

 " than now is among us, which experience might produce, 

 " if we would but essay to extract it out of Nature by particu* 

 " lar probations ; it cannot, in reason, be otherwise thought, 

 " but that there are infinite numbers which embrace the course 

 " that you propose, with all the diligence and care that ability can 

 " perform. I stand well assured," he concludes, " that for the 

 " tenor and subject of your main discourse, you will not be 

 " able to impannel, a substantial jury in any university, that 

 " will give up a verdict to acquit you of error *." But that 

 which places the importance of Bacon's logical instructions in 

 the strongest light, is the fact, that one of the most celebrated 

 of his contemporaries, who also professed himself a reformer of 

 philosophy, employed the better part of his life, in teaching 

 doctrines as diametrically opposite in principle as in tendency. 

 This was Descartes. " Never," says an eloquent philosopher, 

 " did two men, gifted with such genius, recommend paths of in-* 

 " quiry so widely different. Descartes aspired to deduce an ex- 

 " planation of the whole system of things by reasoning a priori 



" upon 



* Sir Thomas Bodley^s Letter to Sir Fraxcis Bacon about his cogitata it, 

 visa.— Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 242, 243, 244. 



