plain by definitions; the empirical, winch from few and limited experiments leaps at once to general conclusions; and the superstitious, which corrupts philosophy by the introduction of poetical and theological notions.
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[1] 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. 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. In the second, the materials of sense are separated or divided in ways not corresponding to nature but after the mind's own pleasure, and the result is Poesy or feigned history. In the third, the materials are worked up after the model or pattern of nature, though we are prone to err in the progress from sense to reason; the result is Philosophy, which is concerned either with God, with nature, or with man, the second being the most important. Natural philosophy is again divided into speculative or theoretical, and operative or practical, according as the end is contemplation or works. Speculative or theoretical natural philosophy has to deal with natural substances and qualities, and is subdivided into physics and metaphysics. Physics inquires into the efficient and material causes of things; metaphysics, into the formal and final causes. The principal objects of physics are concrete substances, or abstract though physical qualities. 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.
"On a given body to generate or superinduce a new nature or natures, is the work and aim of human power. . . . Of a given nature to discover the form or true specific difference, or nature engendering nature (natura naturans) or source of emanation (for these are the terms which are nearest to a description of the thing), is the work and aim of human knowledge."[2]}}
The questions, then, whose answers give the key to the whole Baconian philosophy, may be put briefly thus—What are forms? and how is it that knowledge of them solves both the theoretical and the practical problem of science? Bacon himself, as may be seen from the passage quoted above, finds great difficulty in giving an adequate and exact definition of what he means by a form. As a general description, the following passage from the Novum Organum, ii. 4., may be cited:—
"The form of a nature is such that given the form the nature infallibly follows. . . . Again, the form is such that if it be taken away the nature infallibly vanishes. . . . Lastly, the true form is such that it deduces the given nature from some source of being which is inherent in more natures, and which is better known in the natural order of things than the form itself. "[3]
From this it would appear that, since by a nature is meant some sensible quality, superinduced upon, or possessed by, a body, so by a form we are to understand the cause of that nature, which cause is itself a determinate case or manifestation of some general or abstract quality inherent in a greater number of objects. But all these are mostly marks by which a form may be recognised, and do not explain what the form really is. A further definition is accordingly attempted in Aph. 13:—
"The form of a thing is the very thing itself, and the thing differs from the form no otherwise than as the apparent differs from the real, or the external from the internal, or the thing in reference to the man from the thing in reference to the universe."
This throws a new light on the question, and from it the inference at once follows, that the forms are the permanent causes or substances underlying all visible phenomena, which are merely manifestations of their activity. Are the forms, then, forces? At times it seems as if Bacon had approximated to this view of the nature of things, for in several passages he identifies forms with laws of activity. Thus, he says—
"When I speak of forms I mean nothing more than those laws and determinations of absolute actuality which govern and constitute any simple nature, as heat, light, weight, in every kind of matter and subject that is susceptible of them. Thus the form, of heat or the form of light is the same thing as the law of heat or the law of light."[4] "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."[5] "Forms or true differences of things, which are in fact laws of pure act."[6] "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. And it is this law, with its clauses, that I mean when I speak of forms."[7]
Several important conclusions may be drawn from these passages. In the first place, it is evident that Bacon, like the Atomical school, of whom he highly approved, had a clear perception and a firm grasp of the physical character of natural principles; his forms are no ideas or abstractions, but highly general physical properties. Further, it is hinted that these general qualities may be looked upon as the modes of action of simple bodies. This fruitful conception, however, Bacon does not work out; and though he uses the word cause, and identifies form with formal cause, yet it is perfectly apparent that the modern notions of cause as dynamical, and of nature as in a process of flow or development, are foreign to him, and that in his view of the ultimate problem of science, cause meant causa immanens, or underlying substance, effects were not consequents but manifestations, and nature was regarded in a purely statical aspect. That this is so appears even more clearly when we examine his general conception of the unity, gradation, and function of the sciences. That the sciences are organically connected is a thought common to him and to his distinguished predecessor Roger Bacon. "I that hold it for a great impediment towards the advancement and further invention of knowledge, that particular arts and sciences have been disincorporated from general knowledge, do not understand one and the same thing which Cicero's discourse and the note and conceit of the Grecians in their word circle learning do intend. For I mean not that use which one science hath of another for ornament or help in practice; but I mean it directly of that use by way of supply of light and information, which the particulars and instances of one science do yield and present for the framing or correcting of the axioms of an-
- ↑ N. O., i. 79, 80, 98, 108.
- ↑ Ibid., ii. 1.
- ↑ This better known in the order of nature is nowhere satisfactorily explained by Bacon. Like his classification of causes, and in some degree his notion of form itself, it comes from Aristotle. See An. Post., 71, b 33; Topic, 141, b 5; Eth. Nic., 1095, a 30.
- ↑ N. O., ii. 17
- ↑ Ibid., i. 51.
- ↑ Ibid., i. 75.
- ↑ Ibid., ii. 2.
