NO'VUM ORGANUM, or The New Instrument, lord Bacon's treatise sketching the inductive method of studying nature, which before his time had been pursued only occasionally and blindly—a metliod whose introduction divides philosophy into the old and the new. I. Bacon in the first part of his work surveys the imperfections of human knowledge. 1. He notes the vagueness and uncertainty of all speculation, and the want of connection between the sciences and the arts, due to "the perverseness and insufficiency of the methods pursued." "If men had consulted experience and observa tion, they would have had facts, and not opinions, to reason about." The method then in vogue he describes as "ill-suited to discovery, but wonderfully accommodated to debate." 2. He enumerates the causes of error. naming them in the figurative language so commonly employed by him—idois, things to which the mind had long been accus tomed to bow down: of these he shows four classes: (1.) Idols of the tribe or of the race: causes of error found in human nature in general; such as man's propensity to find in nature a greater degree of order and regularity than actually exists. Thus, as•soon as men perceived that the orbits of the planets were returning curves, they assumed them to be perfect circles, and the motion in them to be uniform; and to these false suppositions the ancient astronomers labored to reconcile the facts which they observed. (2.) Idols of the den: causes of error springing from individual character, as if each person had his own cavern or den, into which light imperfectly enters; some minds being best fitted to mark differences, others resemblances, etc. (3.) Idols of the forum : causes of error arising out of public and social intercourse, and especially out of its implement—lan guage. Men believe that their thoughts govern words; while often their words govern their thoughts, and few abstract terms convey precise and well-defined ideas. (4). Idols of the theater : causes of error arising from the systems or doctrines of particular schools, which are like imaginary worlds brought upon the stage, yet influencing the mind as if they were real. :3. Bacon, pointing out the circumstances which had favored these per verse methods, (1) notes three periods of pursuit of science—the Grecian, Roman, and European—after the revival of letters: the first, short; the second, disturbed in its earlier part by politics and war, and, after the rise of Christianity, by religious interests and theological pursuits; the third, overshadowed by royal and hierarchical power enslaving the mind. In his opinion no part of knowledge could make much prozress if its start
m was not made fro facts in nature; (2.) He shows. that,,the end of knowledge had been misunderstood; that some had pursued the knoWledge of Words rather than of things; some, of objects imaginary and unatta inable,promising to prolong life indefinitely, to extinguish disease, and to rule the spiritual world by magical charms. "All this is the mere boasting of ignorance; for, when the knowledge of nature shall be rightly pur sued, it will lead to discoveries that will as far excel the pretended powers of magic, as the real exploits of Cinsar and Alexander exceed the fabulous adventures of Arthur of Britain or Amadis of Gaul." (3.) Reverence for antiquity and the authority of great names had greatly retarded the progress of knowledge: the "older times" were really the young and inexperienced times; the latest age is the oldest; having gathered the most of facts and experiences. (4.) Knowledge has been greatly hindered by the fact that in general men have inquired only into the causes of rare and great phenomena, without troubling themselves about the explanation of such as are common, and make a part of the general course of nature; while the laws always in action are those which it is most important to understand. It was an error of the same sort which had led men to delight in mere contemplation and to regard manual experiment as beneath the dignity of science.
II. The second book of the _Yoram Organum treats of the induction essential to the right interpretation of nature. 1. A history full and accurate of the phenomena concerned Must I; prepared—a "natural history." 2. There mast be a comparison of the various facts to find out the cause of a phenomenon—its " form or essence ;" also, to discover the invisible processes and the invisible structure of the bodies concerned. 3.. The facts being in hand, consideration is then to be had of them as to what things are by these facts excluded from the number of possible causes. After many such exclusions have left but a few principles common to every case, one of these is to be assumed as the cause, and the trial is to be made by synthetical reasoning whether it will account for the phenomenon. This process by exclusion—through successive negatives to the final affirmative—Bacon regarded as essential to success. 4. This method of induction he declared to be applicable to all investigations where experience is the guide, whether in the physical or moral world.