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tion, look beyond the mind itself: logic is the science of a certain mental process, not the science or art of the collection and examination of material facts. Its conclusions are, in all cases, necessary and irresistible, the premisses being admitted; and depend for their reception by the mind in no degree upon its knowledge or experience of any kind, or even upon the degree of its judgment, or capacity of weighing evidence. There is no evidence to be weighed or balanced in a syllogism, whether deductive or inductive all the evidence is upon one side.

It is true that so much of the Baconian Induction as consists in drawing the conclusion may be resolved into a logical form, by introducing, or assuming that there is always present to the mind, as one of the premisses, a proposition asserting the uniformity of the operations of nature. In this way the major proposition will be, What is found in examined instances will be found in all instances; the minor, A certain thing is what is found in examined instances; the conclusion, Therefore the same thing will be found in all instances. The middle term, (that by which the two premisses are connected so long as they continue distinct, and which like a bridge becomes unnecessary, and is removed, when they are in the conclusion brought together into one affirmation) will be, What is found in examined instances. But this only proves that, in so far as the Baconian Induction is a logical process, its logic is merely the common logic. As the term is used by Bacon, however, it includes also, and that, we may say, as its principal part, another process, the collection and examination of the instances, which, as we have seen, is not a logical process at all.

SECTION II.

THE TREATISE DE DIGNITATE ET AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM; FORMING THE FIRST PART OF THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA.

WHEN the treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum was published, by itself, in 1623, it was introduced by a short advertisement from Dr. Rawley, Bacon's chaplain, the more essential portion of which is to the following effect:

"Since it hath pleased my lord to do me the honour of making use of my assistance in setting forth his works, I have thought that it would not be improper for me briefly to inform the reader of some things which concern this First Volume. The present treatise, on the Dignity and Advancement of the Sciences, was published by his lordship eighteen years ago, in the English language, and in two Books only; and was addressed to his majesty, as it still is. Not long afterwards he became anxious to have it translated into Latin; having heard that that was desired in foreign countries, and being, moreover, himself wont often to say that books written in the modern tongues would ere long become bankrupt. He now, accordingly, publishes such a translation, executed by persons distinguished for their eloquence, and revised and corrected, besides, by himself. The First Book is merely a translation, and is very little changed; but the remaining eight, which declare the partitions of learning, and formerly made only one Book, come forth now as a new work. The principal reason which moved his lordship thus to rewrite and amplify the work was this; that, in publishing long afterwards his Instauratio Magna, he appointed the Partitions of the Sciences to be the first part of that work; and to be followed first by the Novum Organum, then by the Historia Naturalis, and so forth. Finding, then, the said

part relating to the Partitions of the Sciences already executed (though less solidly than the dignity of the argument demanded), he thought the best thing he could do would be to go over again what he had written, and to bring it to the state of a satisfactory and completed work. And in this way he considers that he fulfils the promise which he has given respecting the First Part of the Instauration." It had been noted at the end of the Distributio, published with the Novum Organum, that the First Part of the Instauration, comprehending the Partitions of the Sciences,, was wanting; but that the said Partitions might in part be gathered from the Second Book of The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human.'

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In his Life of Bacon prefixed in English to the Resuscitatio (1657), and in Latin to the Opuscula Posthuma (1658), Rawley speaks of the translation of the

Advancement of Learning' into Latin somewhat differently from what he does in this advertisement. In the English Life, in enumerating in their order the "books and writings, both in English and Latin," written by Bacon after his retirement, he merely mentions the "De Augmentis Scientiarum, or The Advancement of Learning, put into Latin, with several enrichments and enlargements," as if the translation had been wholly Bacon's own. In the Latin Life he expresses himself more emphatically in there noticing the De Augmentis he describes it as a work which the author bestowed much labour in turning from English into Latin by his own exertions, or as the phrase might almost be rendered, without assistance;" in quo e lingua vernacula, proprio marte, in Latinam transferendo honoratissimus auctor plurimum desudavit." We must probably, however, understand the meaning of the worthy chaplain to be only that the translation was in part done by Bacon himself; and his words, in truth, strictly taken, do not assert more. In the Resuscitatio Rawley has printed among other Letters of Bacon's one entitled A Letter of Request to Doctor Playfer to translate the book of Advancement of Learning into Latin.' There Bacon,

themselves. Nor can any substitution or compensation of wit, or meditation, or augmentation, suffice in the stead of this labour, and inquisition, and perambulation of the world; not if all the wit of all men were to combine for the purpose. The labour, therefore, must be undergone, or the undertaking for ever abandoned. . . . It would be of no use to smooth the mirror if there were nothing for it to reflect. ... But our natural history also, like our logic, differs in many respects from that which is generally received; in its end or office, in its very structure and compilation, in its nicety, finally, in its selection, and the order in which it is arranged in reference to what follows it.

"For, in the first place, we propose such a natural history as may not so much amuse by variety of matter, or even profit by present fruit of experiments, as shed light upon the discovery of causes, and yield the first milk for the nursing of philosophy.

"And as for the compilation, our history will be not only that of nature in a state of freedom and ease, when, that is to say, she flows on and performs her work spontaneously-such as is a history of the celestial bodies, of meteors, of the earth and sea, of minerals, plants, and animals; but much rather of nature constrained and vexed, that is, when she is thrust down from her proper state, and pressed upon and made to take a new form, by the art and ministry of man.

...

"Nor do we present the history only of bodies, but we have besides thought it right to exert our diligence to prepare separately also a history of properties themselves; of those, we mean, which may be deemed to be as it were cardinal in nature, and in which the first elements of nature plainly reside, as being matter in its first passions and desires; namely, density, rarity, heat, cold, consistency, fluidity, gravity, levity, and many more.

...

"After having thus guarded the understanding with the surest helps and protections, and prepared with most severe selection a complete host of divine works, it may seem that nothing more remains but that we proceed at once to philosophy itself. Yet in a matter so arduous

and doubtful it appears requisite that some things should be interposed ;* partly for the purpose of instruction, partly for present use. Of these the first is, that some examples be offered of investigation and discovery according to our system and method. . . . We speak now of such examples only as may be of the nature of types and models, placing as it were before our eyes the whole process of the mind, and the continuous frame and order of discovery in particular subjects, and they various and of note... To examples of this kind, therefore, we devote the Fourth Part of our work; which in fact is nothing else than a particular and expanded application of the Second Part.

"The Fifth Part is introduced only for a temporary purpose, until what remains can be finished. . . . It is made up of whatsoever things we have ourselves either found out, or proved, or added; and that not exclusively by the proper methods and rules of interpretation, but simply by that same exercise of the understanding which other men are accustomed to use in investigation and discovery.

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'Finally, the Sixth Part of our work, to which all the other parts are subservient and ministerial, at length discloses and propounds that philosophy which is educed and constituted out of that legitimate, chaste, and severe inquisition, which we have previously taught and prepared. But to accomplish and bring to a termination this last part is a thing both beyond our strength and beyond our hopes. We hope indeed to furnish no contemptible beginning of it; the fortune of the human race will supply the end; which will be such perhaps as, in the present state of things and of men's minds, the imagination cannot easily comprehend or take measure of.”

The panoramic view of his vast design which Bacon spreads out before us in this preliminary discourse, is for

* The meaning is not, as Mr. Wood gives it, "a few reflections must necessarily be here inserted." The "quaedam interponenda" are the subjects of the Fourth Part of the work, the Scala Intellectus.

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