Robert Adamson

“ If, then, Bacon himself made no contributions to science, if no discovery can be shown to be due to the use of his rules, if his method be logically defective, and the problem to which it was applied one from its nature in capable of adequate solution, it may not unreasonably be asked, How has he come to be looked upon as the great leader in the reformation of modern science? How is it that he shares with Descartes the honour of inaugurating modern philosophy? ”

“ Bacon's services to the king's cause had been most important; and as he had, at the same time, acquired great favour with Villiers, his prospects looked brighter than before. According to his custom, he strove earnestly to guide by his advice the conduct of the young favourite. His letters, in which he analyses the various relations in which such a man must stand, and prescribes the course of action suitable for each, are valuable and deserving of attention. ”

“ As regards ethics, it has been already pointed out that Baader rejects the Kantian or any autonomic system of morals. Not obedience to a moral law, but realisation in ourselves of the divine life, through and in which we have our being, is the true ethical end. But man has lost the power to effect this by himself ; he has alienated himself from God, and therefore no ethical theory which neglects the facts of sin and redemption is satisfac tory or even possible. The history of man and of humanity is the history of the redeeming love of God. ”

“ Man's sovereignty over nature, which is founded on knowledge alone, had been lost, and instead of the free relation between things and the human mind, there was nothing but vain notions and blind experiments. To restore the original commerce between man and nature, and to recover the imperium hominis, is the grand object of all science. The want of success which had hitherto attended efforts in the same direction had been due to many causes, but chiefly to the want of appreciation of the nature of philosophy and its real aim. Philosophy is not the. science of things divine and human ”

“ The research into abstract qualities, the fundamental problem of physics, comes near to the metaphysical study of forms, which indeed differs from the first only in being more general, and in having as its result a form strictly so called, i.e., a nature or quality which is a limitation or specific manifestation of some higher and better known genus. Natural philosophy is, therefore, in ultimate resort the study of forms, and, consequently, the fundamental problem of philosophy in general is the discovery of these forms. ”

“ To discover exactly the characteristics and the object of natural philosophy it is necessary to examine the place it holds in the general scheme furnished in the Advancement or De Augmentis. All human knowledge, it is there laid down, may be referred to man's memory, or imagination, or reason. In the first, the bare facts presented to sense are collected and stored up; the exposition of them is History, which is either natural or civil. ”

“ Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of things, where he may have the prospect of the order of nature and error of man? But is this a view of delight only and not of discovery? of contentment and not of benefit? Shall he not as well discern the riches of nature's warehouse as the beauty of her shop? ”

“ Thus the form, of heat or the form of light is the same thing as the law of heat or the law of light." [60] "Matter rather than forms should be the object of our attention, its configurations and changes of configuration, and simple action, and law of action or motion; for forms are figments of the human mind, unless you will call those laws of action forms." ”

“ We thus at last attain a definite conclusion with regard to forms, and it appears clear that in Bacon's belief the true function of science was the search for a few fundamental physical qualities, highly abstract and general, the combinations of which give rise to the simple natures and complex phenomena around us. His general conception of the universe may therefore be called mechanical or statical; the cause of each phenomenon is supposed to be actually contained in the phenomenon itself, and by a sufficiently accurate process could be sifted out and brought to light. ”

“ Physical science, if there was anything deserving that name, was cultivated, not by experiment in the true Aristotelian way, but by discussion and by arguments deduced from premises resting on authority or custom. Everywhere there was a show of knowledge covering and concealing fundamental ignorance. Bacon, accordingly, who knew what true science was, and who had glimpses of a scientific organon or method, withdrew from the usual scholastic routine, and devoted himself to languages and experimental researches. ”

“ The knowledge of the peak, or of the one law which binds nature together, is perhaps denied to man. Of the sciences, physics, as has been already seen, deals with the efficient and material, i.e., with the variable and transient, causes of things. But its inquiries may be directed either towards concrete bodies or towards abstract qualities. The first kind of investigation rises little above mere natural history; but the other is more important, and paves the way for metaphysics. It handles the configurations and the appetites or motions of matter. ”

“ As soon as the causes are known man regains his power over nature, for "whosoever knows any form, knows also the utmost possibility of superinducing that nature upon every variety of matter, and so is less restrained and tied in operation either to the basis of the matter or to the condition of the efficients." [70]
Nature thus presented itself to Bacon's mind as a huge congeries of phenomena, the manifestations of some simple and primitive qualities, which were hid from us by the complexity of the things themselves. ”

“ To this notion of absolute being, which is perfect and the greatest of all, objective existence must be ascribed. In its last and highest form of activity the mind rests in the contemplation of the infinite goodness of God, which is apprehended by means of the highest faculty, the apex mentis, or synderesis. This spark of the divine illumination is common to all forms of mysticism, but Bonaventura adds to it peculiarly Christian elements. ”

“ Experience and observation are the only remedies against prejudice and error. Into questions of metaphysics as commonly understood Bacon can hardly be said to have entered, but a long line of thinkers have drawn inspiration from him, and it is not without justice that he has been looked upon as the originator and guiding spirit of that empirical school which numbers among its adherents such names as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Hartley, Mill, Condillac, the Encyclopædists, and many others of smaller note. ”

“ It is to be regretted that Bacon did not complete this portion of his work, in which for the first time he approaches modern conceptions of change. The latent configuration or inward structure of the parts of a body must be known before we can hope to superinduce a new nature upon it. This can only be discovered by analysis, which will disclose the ultimate constituents (natural particles, not atoms) of bodies, and lead back the discussion to forms or simple natures, whereby alone can true light be thrown on these obscure questions. ”

“ Theological questions, which had tortured the minds of generations, are by him relegated from the province of reason to that of faith. Even reason must be restrained from striving after ultimate truth; it is one of the errors of the human intellect that it will not rest in general principles, but must push its investigations deeper. ”

“ The supreme end of life is such union, union in contemplation or intellect and in intense absorbing love ; but it cannot be entirely reached in this life, and remains as a hope for futurity. The mind in contemplating God has three distinct aspects, stages, or grades, the senses, giving empirical knowledge of what is without and discerning the traces (vestigia) of the divine in the world ; the reason, which examines the soul itself, the image of the divine Being ”

“ The Whigs had so far a basis of operations; they held by the Protestant succession, and were in favour of a war with France. The Tories, who, if thoroughgoing, were really Jacobites, were averse to the French war, because it indirectly weakened their party, and they did not favour the succession. But consistent adherence to principle is a thing one looks for in vain among the majority of statesmen in the reign of Anne. There never was a time in British history when the movements of politicians were regulated by such petty causes, and when great talents had to be turned to such paltry purposes. ”

“ Of the moral works the most valuable are the Essays. It is imposible to praise too highly writings which have been so widely read and universally admired. The matter is of the familiar, practical kind, that "comes home to men's bosoms." The thoughts are weighty, and even when not original, have acquired a peculiar and unique tone or cast by passing through the crucible of Bacon's mind. A sentence from the Essays can rarely be mistaken for the production of any other writer. ”

“ Such are the general causes of the errors that infest the human mind; by their exposure the way is cleared for the introduction of the new method. The nature of this method cannot be understood until it is exactly seen to what it is to be applied. What idea had Bacon of science, and how is his method connected with it? Now, the science [57] which was specially and invariably contemplated by him was Natural Philosophy, the great mother of all the sciences; it was to him the type of scientific knowledge, and its method was the method of all true science. ”

“ It is compelled to accept its first principles on trust from the science in which it is employed; it cannot cope with the subtlety of nature; and it is radically vitiated by being founded on hastily and inaccurately abstracted notions of things. For a syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are the symbols of notions. Now the first step in accurate progress from sense to reason, or true philosophy, is to frame a bona notio or accurate conception of the thing ”

“ We do not think, indeed, that the notiones of which he speaks in any way correspond to what Whewell and Ellis would call "conceptions or ideas furnished by the mind of the thinker;" nor do we imagine that Bacon would have admitted these as necessary elements in the inductive process. But he was certainly not ignorant of what may be called a deductive method, and of a kind of hypothesis. This is clear from the use he makes of the Vindemiatio, from certain hints as to the testing of axioms, from his admission of the syllogism into physical reasoning, and from what he calls Experientia Literata. ”

“ The most interesting, and in many respects the most remarkable, is the philosophic romance, the New Atlantis, a description of an ideal state in which the principles of the new philosophy are carried out by political machinery, and under state guidance, and where many of the results contemplated by Bacon are in imagination attained. ”

“ As it had become absolutely necessary that he should adopt some profession by which an adequate income would be yielded, he selected that of law, and took up his residence at Gray's Inn in 1579.
Nothing throws so clear a light on the career of any great man as a knowledge of his character and aims when he made the first step into the world. We learn from this how he himself desired to shape his course, and at every point can see how far his actions correspond to the end he had placed before him. We have, fortunately, information from Bacon himself on these points. ”

“ Each stage is subdivided, for in contemplating the outer world we may use the senses or the imagination ; we may rise to a knowledge of God per vestigia or in vestigiis. In the first case the three great properties of physical bodies weight, number, measure, in the second the division of created things into the classes of those that have merely physical existence, those that have life, and those that have thought, irresistibly lead us to conclude the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Triune God. ”

“ No one has expounded better than Bolingbroke the fundamental principles of Whig policy, and yet his ideal of a king is a sovereign who, from various qualities, is able to retain nearly absolute power, and to govern without the intervention of party spirit. In philosophy he occupies but a subordinate place in the long line of English writers who drew their inspiration from Locke, and who gave the key-note to the religious enlightenment of the 18th century. ”

“ In the mathematics there is no reason why it should not be employed. It is the flux of matter and the inconstancy of the physical body which requires induction, that thereby it may be fixed as it were, and allow the formation of notions well defined. In physics you wisely note, and therein I agree with you, that after the notions of the first class and the axioms concerning them have been by induction well made out and defined, syllogism may be applied safely ”

“ The world was a vast labyrinth, amid the windings of which we require some clue or thread whereby we may track our way to knowledge and thence to power. This thread, the filum labyrintld, is the new method of induction. But, as has been frequently pointed out, the new method could not be applied until facts had been observed and collected. This is an indispensable preliminary. "Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so much, and so much only, as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature ”

“ Finally the very form of induction itself must be new. "The induction which is to be available for the discovery and demonstration of sciences and arts must analyse nature by proper rejections and exclusions; and then, after a sufficient number of negatives, come to a conclusion on the affirmative instances, which has not yet been done, or even attempted, save only by Plato. ”

“ For though in nature nothing really exists besides individual bodies, performing pure individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy this very law, and the investigation, discovery, and explanation of it, is the foundation as well of knowledge as of operation. ”

“ Nevertheless, it is not to be imagined that by this being proposed as the great object of search there is thereby excluded all that has hitherto been looked upon as the higher aims of human life, such as the contemplation of truth. ”

“ Thus, in all cases, scientific explanation depends upon knowledge of forms; all phenomena or secondary qualities are accounted for by being referred to the primary qualities of matter.
The several steps in the inductive investigation of the form of any nature flow readily from the definition of the form itself. For that is always and necessarily present when the nature is present, absent when it is absent, decreases and increases according as the nature decreases and increases. It is therefore requisite for the inquiry to have before us instances in which the nature is present. ”

“ It disgusted him to hear from all around him that philosophy was now at length complete, that it had been reduced into compact order, and was being set forth by a certain professor at Paris. Even the great authority on which they reposed, Aristotle, was known but in part, and that part was rendered well-nigh unintelligible through the vileness of the translations; yet not one of those professors would learn Greek so that they might arrive at a real knowledge of their philosopher. The Scriptures, if read at all in the schools, were read in the erroneous versions ”

“ As a general rule, no man can be completely dissevered from his national antecedents and surroundings, and Bacon is not an exception. Those who take up such an extreme position regarding his merits have known too little of the state of contemporary science, and have limited their comparison to the works of the scholastic theologians. We never find in Bacon himself any consciousness of originality; he has no fresh creative thought or method to introduce whereby the face of science may be changed ”