the union of reason and experience, while the deplorable condition of science he attributes to their separation. "We think," he says, "that we have established for ever a real and legitimate union between the empirical and rational faculties, whose morose and inauspicious divorces and repudiations have brought so much disturbance to the human family."

Thus does Bacon oppose his own point of view to that of the past, as new and more elevated, reconciling as it does the stubborn differences that have hitherto existed. This opposition of faculties was necessarily unfruitful in its results, and it is only from their union that a fruitful and inventive science can take its beginning. In that happily figurative language, which constitutes one of the great qualities of his style, Bacon compares mere experience to the ants, that can do nothing but collect; the unaided understanding to spiders, that spin webs from themselves; the thinking experience (which is his own) to the bees, that collect and separate at the same time. He says: "Those who have hitherto treated of the sciences have been either empiricists or dog matists. The former, like ants, only heap up, and use what they have collected; the latter, like spiders, spin webs out of themselves; the method of the bee is between these, it collects matter

THE ANT, THE SPIDER, AND THE BEE. 111

from the gardens and the fields, but converts and digests it through its own faculty. Nor does the true labour of philosophy differ from that of the bee; for it relies neither solely nor principally on the powers of the mind, nor does it store up undigested in the memory the matter derived from Natural History and mechanical experiments, but it stores such matter in the understanding, after first modifying and subduing it. Therefore, from a closer and purer alliance of these faculties (the experimental and the rational) than has yet been accomplished, we have much to hope."* matter collected by experience is wrought into science by methodic treatment; that is to say, by true induction, in relation to which it stands as an utensil to be employed, or as a wood to be cleared. †

The

* 66 'Qui tractaverunt scientias aut Empirici aut Dogmatici fuerunt. Empirici, formica more, congerunt tantum et utuntur; Rationales, aranearum more, telas ex se conficiunt: apis vero ratio media est, quæ materiam ex floribus horti et agri elicit, sed tamen eam propria facultate vertit et digerit. Neque absimile philosophiæ verum opificium est; quod nec mentis viribus tantum aut præcipue nititur, neque ex historia naturali et mechanicis experimentis præbitam materiam, in memoria integram, sed in intellectu mutatam et subactam, reponit. Itaque ex harum facultatum (experimentalis scilicet et rationalis) arctiore et sanctiore fœdere (quod adhuc factum non est) bene sperandum est."-Nov. Org. I. 95. Compare also Cogitata et Visa.

†Thus in the "Parasceve" Bacon describes the "Historia Naturalis" as 66 veræ inductionis supellex sui silva."

III. INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION IN THE BACONIAN SCIENCE.

Thus the first problem is solved. It is shown how pure experience proceeds from doubt or the destruction of idols, and how this experience results in science. It is shown what road leads from observation to law, from experiment to axiom. The sensuous perception with which experience sets out frees itself from its idols (delusions of the senses) by rectifying experiments. The inference of the law from the fact, with which experience ends, frees itself from its idols (fallacious conclusions) by a careful consideration of negative instances and a comparison of them with the positive. This comparison is the second experiment. I, as

it

were, ask nature whether the law that is found is true, and will stand every test. "An experiment," says a modern writer, "is a question to which nature gives the reply." This proposition is so correct that we may also assert its converse. Every question put to nature is an experiment; and I question nature by directing myself to her instances, and compelling them to render an account of themselves. Nature is compared by Bacon to Proteus, who only answers when he is

EXPERIMENT THE MEANS OF INVENTION. 113

compelled and bound.* The first experiment rectifies the perception, the second rectifies the inference.

The question, then, that remains is this: how can knowledge, attained by the way of experience, become invention? For invention is the goal which is steadily kept in view by the Baconian philosophy. The simple answer is: by the application of the discovered laws. If this application is possible, invention cannot fail. If I know the forces by which lightning is guided and attracted, I am certain of my lightning-conductor as soon as the required forces are at my disposal. This application of known natural forces is a new question to nature, practically put, a new experiment. Therefore experiment is not only the means by which experience becomes science, but also the means by which science becomes invention. Making experiments, I proceed from observation to axiom, from axiom to invention. "There is left for us," says Bacon, "pure experience, which, if it offers itself, is called chance; if it is sought, is called experiment. But this kind of experience is nothing but a broom without a band (as the saying is), a mere groping in the dark, as of men who, at night, try all means of

* Compare "De Augm. Scient." II. 2. Also the "Wisdom of the Ancients," 13.

I

On

discovering the right road, when it would be much more expedient to wait for the dawn of day, or to kindle a light and then proceed. the contrary, the true order of experience first kindles the light, then shows the way by means of this light; beginning with a regulated and digested, not a misplaced and erratic course of experiment, thence deducing axioms, and then, from the axioms thus established, making new experiments. Not even the Divine Word operated on the mass of things without order. Let men, therefore, cease to wonder, if the whole course of science be not run, when they have altogether wandered from the path; quitting and deserting experience entirely, or entangling themselves and roaming about in it, as in a labyrinth; when a true orderly method would lead them by a sure path through the woods of experience to the open daylight of axioms.”*

si

*"Restat experientia mera, quæ, si occurrat, casus ; quæsita sit, experimentum nominatur. Hoc autem experientia genus nihil aliud est, quam (quod aiunt) scopæ dissolutæ, et mera palpatio, quali homines noctu utuntur, omnia pertentando, si forte in rectam viam incidere detur; quibus multo satius et consultius foret diem præstolari, aut lumen accendere, et deinceps viam inire. At contra, verus experientiæ ordo primo lumen accendit, deinde per lumen iter demonstrat, incipiendo ab experientia ordinata et digesta, et minime præpostera aut erratica, atque ex ea educendo axiomata, atque ex axiomatibus constitutis rursus experimenta nova; quum nec verbum divinum