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When James Spedding introduced Froude to Carlyle he made unconsciously an epoch in English literature. For though Froude was incapable of merging himself in another man, as Spedding merged himself in Bacon, he did more for the author of Sartor Resartus than Spedding did for the author of the Novum Organum. Spedding's Bacon is an impossible hero of unhistorical perfection.
'We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part; for it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes. Novum Organum.
Without any disparagement to the admirable treatise De Augmentis, we must say that, in our judgment, Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum. All the peculiarities of his extraordinary mind are found there in the highest perfection.
So that the Novum Organum presents itself to us, in these passages, only as a preparation and arming of the mind for a closer dealing with the nature of things, in particular instances, which are not there instanced, for those more critical 'WRESTLING INSTANCES' which the scientific re-constructions, according to true definitions, in the higher departments of human want will constitute, those wrestling instances, which will naturally arise whenever the philosophy which concerns itself experimentally with the question of the predominance of powers the philosophy which includes in its programme the practical application of the principles of revolution and abhorrence of change, in 'greater congregations' and 'extensive wholes, as well as the principles of motion in 'particular forms' shall come to be applied to its nobler, to its noblest subjects.
That is the figure that it makes when it comes to be laid in its state-bed, upon the scientific table of review, not in the formal manner of 'the second part' of this philosophy, but in that other manner which the author of the Novum Organum, speaks of so frequently, as the one to be used in applying it to subjects of this nature.
But all those hostile critics owe much to the object of their animadversion. Any schoolboy can refer the preference of Light to Fruit in the Novum Organum, half of Comus and Lycidas, the stately periods of the Decline and Fall, and the severe beauties of Laodamia, to the better influences of academic training on the minds of their authors.
Considered merely as an intellectual feat, the Organum of Aristotle can scarcely be admired too highly. But the more we compare individual with individual, school with school, nation with nation, generation with generation, the more do we lean to the opinion that the knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.
The only part completed was The Advancement of Learning, which served as an introduction. Novum Organum, or the "new instrument," that is, the use of reason and experiment instead of the old Aristotelian logic.
Again, we are not inclined to ascribe much practical value to that analysis of the inductive method which Bacon has given, in the second book of the Novum Organum. It is indeed an elaborate and correct analysis. But it is an analysis of that which we are all doing from morning to night, and which we continue to do even in our dreams. A plain man finds his stomach out of order.
The King did not want him, perhaps did not trust him, perhaps did not really like him. When the Novum Organum came out, all that he had to say about it was in the shape of a profane jest that "it was like the peace of God it passed all understanding."
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