FORE:Of all testimonies to the restored supremacy of Aristotelianism, there is none so remarkable as that afforded by the thinker who, more than any other, has enjoyed the credit of its overthrow. To call Francis Bacon an Aristotelian will seem to most readers a paradox. Such an appellation would, however, be much nearer the truth than were the titles formerly bestowed on the author of the Novum Organum. The notion, indeed, that he was in any sense the father of modern science is rapidly disappearing from the creed of educated persons. Its long continuance was due to a coalition of literary men who knew nothing about physics and of physicists who knew nothing about philosophy or its history. It is certain that the great discoveries made both before and during Bacons lifetime were the starting-point of all future progress in the same direction. It is equally certain that Bacon himself had either not heard of those discoveries or that he persistently rejected them. But it might still be contended that he divined and formulated the only method by which these and all other great additions to human knowledge have been made, had not the delusion been dispelled by recent investigations, more especially those of his own editors, Messrs. Ellis and Spedding. Mr. Spedding has shown that Bacons method never was applied to physical science at all. Mr. Ellis has shown that it was incapable of application, being founded on a complete misconception of the problem to be solved. The facts could in truth, hardly have been other373 than what they are. Had Bacon succeeded in laying down the lines of future investigation, it would have been a telling argument against his own implied belief that all knowledge is derived from experience. For, granting the validity of that belief, a true theory of discovery can only be reached by an induction from the observed facts of scientific practice, and such facts did not, at that time, exist in sufficient numbers to warrant an induction. It would have been still more extraordinary had he furnished a clue to the labyrinth of Nature without ever having explored its mazes on his own account. Even as it is, from Bacons own point of view the contradiction remains. If ever any system was constructed priori the Instauratio Magna was. But there is really no such thing as priori speculation. Apart from observation, the keenest and boldest intellect can do no more than rearrange the materials supplied by tradition, or give a higher generalisation to the principles of other philosophers. This was precisely what Bacon did. The wealth of aphoristic wisdom and ingenious illustration scattered through his writings belongs entirely to himself; but his dream of using science as an instrument for acquiring unlimited power over Nature is inherited from the astrologers, alchemists, and magicians of the Middle Ages; and his philosophical system, with which alone we are here concerned, is partly a modification, partly an extension, of Aristotles. An examination of its leading features will at once make this clear.
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