axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immoveable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried."[1] Thus, according to Bacon, the discovery of the lowest principles by induction of particulars precedes the discovery of the middle principles and the discovery of the middle principles precedes the discovery of the highest principles.
The process of discovery is represented by Bacon's Three Ministrations.[2] Aristotle taught that knowledge had its beginning in the senses. Sense-experiences are retained in the mind—hence next enters memory. Sense-experiences of the same kind, repeated, produce experience. And from experience arises the appreciation of the universal by νοῦς or reason. Bacon's Three Ministrations follow the same order. They are the Ministration to the Senses, the Ministration to the Memory, the Ministration to the Mind or Reason. But in contrast to Aristotle, Bacon does not allow the same spontaneity to the action of reason. The mechanical certainty of his method forbids. "Still the understanding, if left to itself and its own spontaneous movements, is incompetent and unfit to form axioms, unless it be directed and guarded."[3] In Nov. Org., II, 15, Bacon seems quite definitely to oppose Aristotle's doctrine of the spontaneous action of Nοῦς as giving truth. "To God, truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion has been exhausted." [4]
- ↑ Nov. Org., I, 19. Cf. I, 104; Kitchin, Nov. Org. (translation), 1855, p. XXVII—Translation of that part of the Distributio Operis (the outline of the "Instauratio Magna") which relates to the Novum Organum.
- ↑ See Nov. Org., II, 10.
- ↑ Ibid., II, 10.
- ↑ Italics mine. Aristotle, however, would not have placed God and man in such sharp antithesis. Nοῦς to Aristotle, was of divine origin, so that he
