NOVUM ORGANUM.
The defects which have been ascribed to the ancient physics were not likely to be correct ed in the course of the middle ages. It is true, that, during those ages, a science of pure experiment had made its appearance in the world, and.might have been expected to lame the greatest of these defects, by turning the attention of philosophers to experience and observation. This effect, however, was far from being immediately produced ; and none who professed 'to be in search of- truth ever wandered over the regions of fancy, in, paths more devious and. than the first experimenters in chemistry. They had become acquainted with a series of facts so unlike to.any thing already, known, that the ordinary principles of belief were shaken or subverted, and the mind laid open to a degree of credu lity far beyond any with .which the philosophers of antiquity could be reproached. An un looked-for extension of human power had taken place ; its limits were yet unknown ; and the boundary between thepossible and the impossible no longer.to be distinguished. The country, given up to the guidance of imagination, pursued objects which the kindness, no less than the wisdom of nature, have rendered unattainable by man ; and in their speculations peopled the air, the earth, and* all the elements, with .spirits and genii, the invisible agents destined to connect together,all the. facts -which they Anew, end all those which they hoped.to discover. Chemistry, in this state, might be- said to,have, an elective attraction for all that was most absurd and extravagant in the puts of alchemy ,was itaimmediate offspring, and it allied itself in sueoessien with t,heAreau3s of the the Rosicrucians, and' the Theosophers. Thus a science, ,f9upded .experiment, and destined one day to afford such noble examples of its .use, •x )Obited for several ves.little.else than a series of illusory pursuits, or visionary 'speculations, ,while now ankthen ,a.fsct w,as accideutallY discovered.
,Under the influence of these circumstances arose Paracelsus, Van •Helinost, ,Fladde,. cardan, and „several „others, conspicuous no less the weakness-than the -force of understandings.: ,man extremecredulity, the most extravagant and the most. excessive vanity, with considerable powers of invention, a complete contempt for authority, and a desire to censnit but.destitute of the judgment,.patienee, sad comprehensive views, without which the responses of that oracle are never to be unclorstood. Though they appealed to experience, and disclaimed subjection to the old legislators of science, they were in too great haste to become legislators themselves, ,and to deduce an explanatiop of the whole phenomena of nature from a few facts, observed without ac curacy, arranged without skill, and never compared or confronted with one another. For tunately, however, from the turn which their inquiries had taken, the ill done by them has passed away, and the good has become perminent. The reveries of Paracelsus have disap peared, but his application of chemistry to pharmacy has conferred a lasting benefit on the 3 laughed at, or forgotten ; but the fluids which he had the sagacity to diatinguish, form, at the present moment, the connecting principles of the new chemistry.
Earlier than any of the authors just named, but in a great measure under the influence of the same delusions, Roger Bacon appears to have .been more fully aware than any of them of the use of experiment, and of mathematical reasoning, in physical and mechanical inquiries. But, in the thirteenth century, an appeal from the authority of the schools; even to nature herself, could not be made with impunity. Bacon, accordingly, the displeasure both of the University and of the Church, and this forms one of his claims to the respect of posterity, as it is but fair to consider persecution inflicted by the ignorant and bigoted as equivalent to praise bestowed by the liberal and enlightened.