of Edinburgh, Session 1877 - 78 . 483 
are Csesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Therefore, if 
subsequent philosophers have taken a different attitude, the responsi- 
bility surely rests with themselves. 
The last reproach against Bacon is, that he made no discoveries 
himself, and that he directly led the way to none. Both of these 
allegations are, in fact, undeniable. Bacon sometimes showed 
brilliant intuitions into the nature of things ; for example, in illus- 
trating his method of discovery by “ prerogative instances,” he 
says : — “The phenomenon of colour is discovered most readily, and 
with the least heterogeneous admixture, in prisms, crystals, and 
dew-drops ; for these have little or nothing in common with other 
coloured bodies, such as flowers, stones, metals, varieties of wood, 
&c. They are, in this respect, single instances, and from observing 
them we easily arrive at the result that colour is nothing but a 
modification of the image of the incident and absorbed light ; in 
the former case by the different degrees of incidence, in the latter 
by the textures and various forms of bodies.” This paragraph has 
been said to contain an anticipation of Goethe’s theory of 
colours. But such intuitions were only, like those of Aristotle, 
the happy thoughts of a powerful intellect. Discovery, properly 
so called, remains as the prerogative of the specialist ; and Bacon, 
though he killed himself by the experiment of stuffing a fowl with 
snow, cannot claim any discovery as his own. 
Nor have discoveries been made by following the precepts of the 
Baconian method of induction. Some attribute this to the incom- 
pleteness of the second part of the Novum Organum ; others 
say that it is because Bacon’s method is based on an erroneous 
view of causation. Twenty years ago, Dr Whewell brought out a 
Novum Organum Renovatum, to supply Bacon’s deficiencies ; 
but we may safely venture to assert, that WhewelFs book will not' 
he a hit more fertile in producing discoveries than Bacon’s has 
been. Logic is a useful part of education, and is necessary as a 
part of philosophy ; but every real worker in the world seems to 
have an unconscious logic of his own, based on innumerable 
analogies of the class of facts with which he is in the habit of 
dealing. The study of deductive logic will never of itself create 
powerful reasoning in the law courts or the senate ; and let the 
logic of inductive method he laid down never so perfectly, still dis- 
