PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF LORD BACON. 405 



ceed gradually from truth to truth, till we reach the most ge- 

 neral that can be discovered,— these are the principles of phi- 

 losophizing which Bacon unfolded, and which Newton has, 

 in the most emphatic terms, embodied with his discove- 

 ries. " Quel tfonoignage" exclaims an eminent French philoso^- 

 pher, " rendu par le genie inventeur au genie des mtthodes * /.' 

 Such, indeed, was the connection between the logic of the No- 

 vum Orgamtm, and the philosophy of the Principia, that it was 

 only where the one was followed, that the other prevailed. 

 The sublime Geometry of the Principia^ says Maclaurin, was 

 admired by all, but it was only among minds trained by Ba- 

 con's precepts that it found a ready reception for its Philo- 

 sophy f . 



To these proofs of the influence of Bacon's precepts and 

 exhortations, reflected in the acknowledgments, the views, and 

 the discoveries of the early founders of the English School of 

 Experimental Philosophy, I have yet to add those which are 

 furnished by the writings of its opponents and detractors. The 

 public countenance given to that School by the erection of 

 the Royal Society, early excited an extraordinary degree of 

 jealousy on the part of the Universities ; and a keen spirit 

 of opposition among the remaining supporters of the Aris- 

 totelian philosophy. Sprat accordingly found it necessary, 

 in his History of the Society, to employ a long argument to 

 prove, that this new establishment would be attended with 



no 



* Degerando — Hisloire comparee des Systemes de Philosophic, torn. i. p. 396. — 

 The introduction to Dr Pemberton , s Account of Newton's Discoveries, a work, 

 " the greater part of which was read and approved," as we are told in the preface, 

 by Newton himself, contains a summary of the doctrines of the Novum Organum; 

 and its author is represented as the first who taught those rules of philosophizing 

 which Newton followed, and which his discoveries so nobly confirmed. 



•}■ Maclaurin's Account of Newton's Discoveries, p. 59, 60. 



