480 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
these deficiencies. The whole was to he a prelude to his Instauratio 
Magna , or entire remodelling of the sciences, and was intended 
especially to catch the mind of James I., who was, however, of too 
pedantic an intellect, and too much absorbed in theology, to rise to 
the level of Bacon’s great argument. In 1620, when Lord Chancellor 
of England and Baron Yerulam, he brought out his Novum 
Organum , or new method of the sciences, in two divisions, of which 
the first was destructive of scholasticism, and the second constructive 
of a better way. The Novum Organum contained the chief pith 
of Bacon’s philosophy, but of this only the first or destructive part 
was complete. No praise can be too high for the manner in which 
scholasticism is for ever annihilated in this treatise. The trenchant 
criticism, the large and luminous good sense, the grand and true 
conceptions of man’s relation to nature, the striking metaphors — now 
as familiar as household words — which pervade the first part of 
Bacon’s Organum , have rendered it an immortal work, from the 
point of view of literature as well as of philosophy. But it would 
be ludicrous to maintain that, in writing it, Bacon followed the 
footsteps of no one. There had been a host of attacks upon Aristotle 
and the Aristotelians. Bamus, in Paris, as a young man, had 
sustained the thesis, that “ everything which Aristotle had said was 
false.” Patrizzi, in Venice, had published an assault upon Aristotle 
characterised by the utmost malignity. Galileo, at Pisa, had roused 
the anger of the Aristotelians by demonstrating that Aristotle was in 
error when he said that heavy bodies fall faster than light ones. The 
air in Europe was full of revolt against scholasticism, and yet Bacon 
thought that when he laid down, in his brilliant way, that “ Truth 
is the daughter of Time, and not of authority that the “ ancients 
were the children of the world and that “ the syllogism is unequal 
to the subtlety of things,” be was stating something original, and not 
following in the footsteps of any one. Bacon, having imbibed, with 
the quick apprehension of genius, numberless suggestions from his 
contemporaries and predecessors, at once kicked down the ladders 
on which his mind had risen : he spoke with the greatest disdain of 
Ramus and Patrizzi : and he so little appreciated Galileo that, when 
informed of some of the labours upon which Galileo was engaged, he 
said to his informant : — “ I wish you would persuade those Italian 
astronomers to give up amusing us with their idle stories, and stick 
