and Similitudes is of very great use in very many cases."[1] This is in sharp contrast with his formal method, but brings him into close relationship with Aristotle.[2] On certain of these analogies, e.g., the analogy between the fins of fishes, the feet of quadrupeds, and the feet and wings of birds; and the analogy of the beak of birds and the teeth of other animals, it has been pointed out[3] that Bacon did not add much to what he found in Aristotle.
It is possible to draw further significant comparisons between Aristotle's and Bacon's philosophies of nature. "For to say that the hairs of the eyelids are for a quickset and fence about the sight; or that the firmness of the skins and hides of living creatures is to defend them from the extremities of heat and cold, ... and the like, is well enquired and collected in Metaphysic; but in Physic they are impertinent. ... Not because these final causes are not true, and worthy to be enquired, being kept within their own province; but because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that track. ... For the cause rendered, that the hairs about the eyelids are for the safeguard of the sight, doth not impugn the cause rendered, that pilosity is incident to orifices of moisture ...; and so of the rest."[4] From this passage we can gather Bacon's attitude towards Final Causes. Their consideration is excluded from physics and relegated to metaphysics. This exclusion is in one-sided opposition to Aristotelian practice.[5] Bacon rushes from the error of one extreme to the error of another extreme. Although Bacon separates physical from final causes, he does not consider them inconsistent, the one with the other. As to Aristotle, so to Bacon, the former were the "servants and instruments" of the latter, for, Bacon held, final causes necessitate the existence of a God, who realises his purposes through physical causes. Bacon substituted God for Aristotle's Nature, which
- ↑ Nov. Org., II, 27 ad fin. Cf. Ellis and Spedding, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 622f-623—De Aug. Sc., where Bacon speaks of Experientia Literata as a kind of sagacity.
- ↑ See supra, pp. 478-9.
- ↑ See Ellis and Spedding, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 44, note 1.
- ↑ Ellis and Spedding, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 358-9—Advancement of Learning.
- ↑ See supra, pp. 476-478.
