the illustrious author. It will be perceived that the titles are, in some instances, quaint and fanciful; but they for the most part happily express the meaning they are intended to convey.

In order to prove the utility and importance of experimental knowledge, to facilitate the investigation of nature, physical facts (termed by the philosopher" prærogative instantiarum") are arranged as follows:

1. Solitary---illustrated by the doctrine of colours.

2. Migrating--- exemplified by physical changes of form, &c.

3. Ostensive or convincing--as in the case of the thermometer.

4. Clandestine---as in the magnet or loadstone.

5. Constituent or collective--as in the process of memory, &c.

6. Parallel or conformable---as in the human eye and lenses.

7. Singular or heteroclite---as the sun among the stars. 8. Deviating or irregular---as in the case of monsters. 9. Frontier or boundary facts---as moss, bats, and apes. 10. Those which indicate power --- as inventions and discoveries.

11. Accompanying and hostile---as fire and smoke, or air and solidity.

12. Subjunctive or extreme---as gold in weight, the whale in bulk, iron in hardness, &c.

13. Instances of confederacy and alliance---illustrated by attraction.

14. Crucial facts, or those which decide doubtful questions---illustrated by the tides.

15. Instances of divorce or separation---as in the accidental qualities of bodies, or the phænomena of magnetism,

16. Those of the gate, the portal---e. g. the telescope

and microscope.

17. Summoning facts---as when latent properties are brought to light by experiment.

18. Progressive---as in the processes of vegetation and

nutrition.

19. Supplemental or substitutive--as in chemical affinities and combinations.

20. Lancing or vellicating facts---those by which the understanding is forcibly reminded of remarkable phænomena.

21. Measuring or terminating facts, which relate to space and distance---as in percussion or attraction. 22. Those of the course or regular motion---as in the propagation of sound or the velocity of light. 23. Those of quantity---as in drops of dew, or the

ocean.

24. Reluctant, or those indicative of the inertia of matter: (under this class, all the varieties of motion are considered.)

25. Intimating facts, or those which suggest others. 26. Sovereign or general, including those which have been fully established by numerous experiments. 27. Magical facts, or those in which marvellous effects are produced by apparently trifling causes.

Of the above classification of instances it may be remarked, that fifteen relate to the understanding, five to the senses, and the remaining seven to the practical arts and sciences. It is a lasting memorial of the ingenuity and profound wisdom of its inventor, and fully justifies the following high eulogium, pronounced by the late Professor Playfair, at the close of his elaborate and admirable analysis of the Novum Organum:-" The power and compass of such a mind, which could form such a plan

beforehand, and trace not merely the outlines, but many of the most minute ramifications of sciences which did not yet exist, must be an object of admiration to all succeeding ages. He is destined (if indeed any thing in the world be so destined) to be an instantia singularis among men; and as he had no rival in times past, he is likely to have none in those which are to come. If ever a second Bacon is to arise, he must be ignorant of the first."--(Vide Playfair's Diss. ut sup. p. 55.)

SECTION V.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF LORD BACON.

367. MANY of the distinguished names which have occurred in former sections are identified with some one department of science, in which they excelled, and where their efforts proved most successful. Few, comparatively, are those who have acquired honourable distinction in both the great divisions of human knowledge, scientific and intellectual; and among these, Lord Bacon stands preeminent. Galileo, Kepler, Huygens, and, above all, Newton, may perhaps rank above Bacon, both in mathematical and physical science; but, if we except the last of the illustrious train of natural philosophers just enumerated, their views even on physical subjects were far less comprehensive than those of Bacon; and in intellectual science they were

utterly unable to approach him. While pursuing their most brilliant discoveries, the former were led on step by step without any anticipations of the developments of future ages; but the latter seems to have astonished both his contemporaries and his successors, by a long catalogue of desiderata and facienda, by his almost prophetic visions of futurity. Upborne by his mighty genius, as to the summit of some lofty mountain, his eagle sight penetrated through the surrounding darkness, and saw, dimly and indistinctly indeed, but yet with sufficient clearness to guide future inquirers, the vast regions of experimental philosophy, which have since been traversed in every direction.

368. But merited as is the renown of Lord Bacon, acquired by his physical researches, it is manifest from his writings, that he was more completely at home in intellectual philosophy; and that, if the properties and laws of matter were subjects, to the investigation of which the force of his genius was frequently directed, those with which he was most familiar, and in which he most delighted, were the phænomena of mind," the laws, the resources, and the limits of the human understanding."

(1.) As a profound logician, Bacon stands unrivalled. Despising the subtilties, which, during many ages, had been mistaken for true science; passing over, with silent contempt, the absurd logomachies of the schoolmen, he devised a method of reasoning at once the most simple and conclusivethat of legitimate induction. The object of this inductive process of reasoning is, by ascending from

axioms, or self-evident truths, to principles of universal application, to arrive at demonstration and absolute certainty; just as in physics, we are led onward from individual facts, by a series of experimental proofs, to the discovery of some general law of nature. That this most satisfactory process should have effectually subverted the scholastic logic, without any attempt, on the part of its author, to expose the absurdities and sophistry of the schoolmen, might reasonably have been expected; nor would it require much penetration to perceive, that such a work as the "Novum Organum," could not fail to produce a new era in the dialectic art.

369. (2.) With logic, universal grammar, or the theory of language, is closely connected. Nor did this escape the penetrating genius of Bacon, though his aphorisms on this subject must rather be considered as hints suggested to future logicians, than systematically arranged. His inquiry into the mutual influence of thought and language is most important, and still remains as a highly interesting object of philosophical research. The distinction made by him between grammar, considered as a branch of literature, and as a department of philosophy, affords a fine specimen of the enlarged, the comprehensive, the almost boundless view he was accustomed to take of whatever subject fell beneath his notice. The former is chiefly concerned in tracing out the analogies and relations of words among themselves; but the latter aims at the discovery and adjustment of the relation between words and things,--it is the sensible portraiture of the mental