The founder of the empirical philosophy of modern times was
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a contemporary of Shakespeare. Bacon began
his political career by sitting in Parliament for many years under Queen
Elizabeth, as whose counsel he was charged with the duty of engaging in
the prosecution of his patron, the Earl of Essex, and at whose command he
prepared a justification of the process. Under James I, he attained the
highest offices and honors, being made Keeper of the Great Seal in 1617,
Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St. Albans in
1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, and
condemned; the king remitted the imprisonment and fine, and for the
remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every
suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxity
of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be
aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive
ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant
nor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation of
sentiment; there were many things which he loved more than virtue, and many
which he feared more than guilt. He first gained renown as an author by his
ethical, economic, and political Essays after the manner of Montaigne;
of these the first ten appeared in 1597, in the third edition (1625)
increased to fifty-eight; the Latin translation bears the title Sermones
Fideles His great plan for a "restoration of the sciences" was intended
to be carried out in four, or rather, in six parts. But only the first two
parts of the Instauratio Magnawere developed: the encyclopaedia or
division of all sciences[1], a chart of the globus intellectualis on
which was depicted what each science had accomplished and what still
remained for each to do; and the development of the new method Bacon
published his survey of the circle of the sciences in the English work, the
Advancement of Learning 1605, a much enlarged revision of which, De
Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum appeared in Latin in 1623. In 1612
he printed as a contribution to methodology the draft, Cogitata et Visa
(written 1607), later recast into the [first book of the] Novum Organum
1620. This title, Novum Organum of itself indicates opposition to
Aristotle, whose logical treatises had for ages been collected under the
title Organon If in this work Bacon had given no connected exposition
of his reforming principles, but merely a series of aphorisms, and this
an incomplete one, the remaining parts are still more fragmentary, only
prefaces and scattered contributions having been reduced to writing. The
third part was to have been formed by a description of the world or natural
history, Historia Naturalis and the last,--introduced by a Scala
Intellectus(ladder of knowledge, illustrations of the method
by examples), and by Prodromi(preliminary results of his own
inquiries),--by natural science, Philosophia Secunda The best edition of
Bacon's works is the London one of Spedding, Ellis & Heath, 1857 seq, 7
vols., 2d ed., 1870; with 7 volumes additional of The Letters and Life of
Francis Bacon, including His Occasional Works and a Commentary, by J.
Spedding, 1862-74. Spedding followed this further with a briefer Account
of the Life and Times of Francis Bacon 2 vols., 1878[2].
[Footnote 1: According to the faculties of the soul, memory, imagination,
and understanding, three principal sciences are distinguished; history,
poesy, and philosophy. Of the three objects of the latter, "nature strikes
the mind with a direct ray, God with a refracted ray, and man himself
with a reflected ray." Theology is natural or revealed. Speculative
(theoretical) natural philosophy divides into physics, concerned with
material and efficient causes, and metaphysics, whose mission, according to
the traditional view, is to inquire into final causes, but in Bacon's own
opinion, into formal causes; operative (technical) natural philosophy
is mechanics and natural magic. The doctrine concerning man comprises
anthropology (including logic and ethics) and politics. This division of
Bacon was still retained by D'Alembert in his preliminary discourse to the
Encyclopédie]
[Footnote 2: Cf. on Bacon, K. Fischer, 2d ed., 1875; Chr. Sigwart, in the
Preussische Jahrbücher 1863 and 1864, and in vol. ii. of his Logik
H. Heussler, Baco und seine geschichtliche Stellung Breslau, 1889.
[Adamson, Encyclopedia Britannica 9th. ed., vol. iii. pp. 200-222;
Fowler, English Philosophers Series, 1881; Nichol, Blackwood's
Philosophical Classics, 2 vols., 1888-89.--TR.]] Bacon's merit was
threefold: he felt more forcibly and more clearly than previous
thinkers the need of a reform in science; he set up a new and grand
ideal--unbiased and methodical investigation of nature in order to
mastery over nature; and he gave information and directions as to
the way in which this goal was to be attained, which, in spite of their
incompleteness in detail, went deep into the heart of the subject and laid
the foundation for the work of centuries.[1] His faith in the omnipotence
of the new method was so strong, that he thought that science for the
future could almost dispense with talent. He compares his method to a
compass or a ruler, with which the unpractised man is able to draw circles
and straight lines better than an expert without these instruments.
[Footnote 1: His detractors are unjust when they apply the criterion of the
present method of investigation and find only imperfection in an imperfect
beginning.]
All science hitherto, Bacon declares, has been uncertain and unfruitful,
and does not advance a step, while the mechanic arts grow daily more
perfect; without a firm basis, garrulous, contentious, and lacking in
content, it is of no practical value. The seeker after certain knowledge
must abandon words for things, and learn the art of forcing nature to
answer his questions. The seeker after fruitful knowledge must increase
the number of discoveries, and transform them from matters of chance into
matters of design. For discovery conditions the power, greatness, and
progress of mankind. Man's power is measured by his knowledge, knowledge is
power, and nature is conquered by obedience--scientia est potentia; natura
parendo vincitur
Bacon declares three things indispensable for the attainment of this
power-giving knowledge: the mind must understand the instruments of
knowledge; it must turn to experience, deriving the materials of knowledge
from perception; and it must not rise from particular principles to the
higher axioms too rapidly, but steadily and gradually through middle
axioms. The mind can accomplish nothing when left to itself; but undirected
experience alone is also insufficient (experimentation without a plan is
groping in the dark), and the senses, moreover, are deceptive and not acute
enough for the subtlety of nature--therefore, methodical experimentation
alone, not chance observation, is worthy of confidence. Instead of the
customary divorce of experience and understanding, a firm alliance, a
"lawful marriage," must be effected between them. The empiricists merely
collect, like the ants; the dogmatic metaphysicians spin the web of their
ideas out of themselves, like the spiders; but the true philosopher must be
like the bee, which by its own power transforms and digests the gathered
material.
As the mind, like a dull and uneven mirror, by its own nature distorts the
rays of objects, it must first of all be cleaned and polished, that is, it
must be freed from all prejudices and false notions, which, deep-rooted by
habit, prevent the formation of a true picture of the world. It must root
out its prejudices, or, where this is impossible, at least understand them.
Doubt is the first step on the way to truth. Of these Phantoms or Idols to
be discarded, Bacon distinguishes four classes: Idols of the Theater, of
the Market Place, of the Den, and of the Tribe. The most dangerous are
the idola theatri which consist in the tendency to put more trust in
authority and tradition than in independent reflection, to adopt current
ideas simply because they find general acceptance. Bacon's injunction
concerning these is not to be deceived by stage-plays (i.e. by the
teachings of earlier thinkers which represent things other than they are);
instead of believing others, observe for thyself! The idola fori which
arise from the use of language in public intercourse, depend upon the
confusion of words, which are mere symbols with a conventional value and
which are based on the carelessly constructed concepts of the vulgar, with
things themselves. Here Bacon warns us to keep close to things. The idola
specus Are individual prepossessions which interfere with the apprehension
of the true state of affairs, such as the excessive tendency of thought
toward the resemblances or the differences of things, or the investigator's
habit of transferring ideas current in his own department to subjects of a
different kind. Such individual weaknesses are numberless, yet they may in
part be corrected by comparison with the perceptions of others. The idola
tribus finally, are grounded in the nature of the human species. To this
class belong, among others, illusions of the senses, which may in part be
corrected by the use of instruments, with which we arm our organs; further,
the tendency to hold fast to opinions acceptable to us in spite of contrary
instances; similarly, the tendency to anthropomorphic views, including,
as its most important special instance, the mistake of thinking that we
perceive purposive relations everywhere and the working of final causes,
after the analogy of human action, when in reality efficient causes alone
are concerned. Here Bacon's injunction runs, not to interpret natural
phenomena teleologically, but to explain them from mechanical causes; not
to narrow the world down to the limits of the mind, but to extend the mind
to the boundaries of the world, so that it shall understand it as it
really is.
To these warnings there are added positive rules. When the investigator,
after the removal of prejudices and habitual modes of thought, approaches
experience with his senses unperverted and a purified mind, he is to
advance from the phenomena given to their conditions. First of all, the
facts must be established by observation and experiment, and systematically
arranged,[1] then let him go on to causes and laws.[2] The true or
scientific induction[3] thus inculcated is quite different from the
credulous induction of common life or the unmethodical induction of
Aristotle. Bacon emphasizes the fact that hitherto the importance of
negative instances, which are to be employed as a kind of counter-proof,
has been completely overlooked, and that a substitute for complete
induction, which is never attainable, may be found, on the one hand, in the
collection of as many cases as possible, and, on the other, by considering
the more important or decisive cases, the "prerogative instances." Then the
inductive ascent from experiment to axiom is to be followed by a deductive
descent from axioms to new experiments and discoveries. Bacon rejects
the syllogism on the ground that it fits one to overcome his opponent in
disputation, but not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his own
application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a
dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful
promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His
strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction
of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions;
and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their
ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest defect in his
theory was his complete failure to recognize the services promised by
mathematics to natural science. The charge of utilitarianism, which has
been so broadly made, is, on the contrary, unjust. For no matter how
strongly he emphasizes the practical value of knowledge, he is still in
agreement with those who esteem the godlike condition of calm and cheerful
acquaintance with truth more highly than the advantages to be expected from
it; he desires science to be used, not as "a courtezan for pleasure," but
"as a spouse for generation, fruit and comfort," and--leaving entirely out
of view his isolated acknowledgments of the inherent value of knowledge--he
conceives its utility wholly in the comprehensive and noble sense that the
pursuit of science, from which as such all narrow-minded regard for direct
practical application must keep aloof, is the most important lever for the
advancement of human culture.
[Footnote 1: Bacon illustrates the method by the explanation of heat. The
results of experimental observation are to be arranged in three tables. The
table of presence contains many different cases in which heat occurs; the
table of absence, those in which, under circumstances otherwise the same,
it is wanting; the table of degrees or comparison enumerates phenomena
whose increase and decrease accompany similar variations in the degree of
heat. That which remains after the exclusion now to be undertaken (of
that which cannot be the nature or cause of heat), yields as a preliminary
result or commencement of interpretation (as a "first vintage"), the
definition of heat: "a motion, expansive, restrained, and acting in its
strife upon the smaller particles of bodies."]
[Footnote 2: This goal of Baconian inquiry is by no means coincident with
that of exact natural science. Law does not mean to him, as to the physical
scientist of to-day, a mathematically formulated statement of the course of
events, but the nature of the phenomenon, to be expressed in a definition
(E. König, Entwickelung des Causalproblems bis Kant 1883, pp. 154-156).
Bacon combines in a peculiar manner ancient and modern, Platonic and
corpuscular fundamental ideas. Rejecting final causes with the atomists,
yet handing over material and efficient causes (the latter of which sink
with him to the level of mere changing occasional causes) to empirical
physics, he assigns to metaphysics, as the true science of nature, the
search for the "forms" and properties of things. In this he is guided by
the following metaphysical presupposition: Phenomena, however manifold
they may be, are at bottom composed of a few elements, namely, permanent
properties, the so-called "simple natures," which form, as it were, the
alphabet of nature or the colors on her palette, by the combination of
which she produces her varied pictures; e. g, the nature of heat and
cold, of a red color, of gravity, and also of age, of death. Now the
question to be investigated becomes, What, then, is heat, redness, etc.?
The ground essence and law of the natures consist in certain forms,
which Bacon conceives in a Platonic way as concepts and substances, but
phenomenal ones, and, at the same time, with Democritus, as the grouping or
motion of minute material particles. Thus the form of heat is a particular
kind of motion, the form of whiteness a determinate arrangement of material
particles. Cf. Natge, Ueber F. Bacons Formenlehre Leipsic, 1891, in
which Heussler's view is developed in more detail. [Cf. further, Fowler's
Bacon English Philosophers Series, 1881, chap. iv.--TR.]]
[Footnote 3: The Baconian method is to be called induction, it is true,
only in the broad sense. Even before Sigwart, Apelt, Theorie der
Induction 1854, pp. 151, 153, declared that the question it discussed was
essentially a method of abstraction. This, however, does not detract from
the fame of Bacon as the founder, of the theory of inductive investigation
(in later times carefully elaborated by Mill).]
Bacon intended that his reforming principles should accrue to the benefit
of practical philosophy also, but gave only aphoristic hints to this
end. Everything is impelled by two appetites, of which the one aims at
individual welfare, the other at the welfare of the whole of which the
thing is a part (bonum suitatis--bonum communionis. The second is not
only the nobler but also the stronger; this holds of the lower creatures as
well as of man, who, when not degenerate, prefers the general welfare to
his individual interests. Love is the highest of the virtues, and is never,
as other human endowments, exposed to the danger of excess; therefore the
life of action is of more worth than the life of contemplation. By this
principle of morals Bacon marked out the way for the English ethics of
later times.[1] He notes the lack of a science of character, for which more
material is given in ordinary discourse, in the poets and the historians,
than in the works of the philosophers; he explains the power of the
affections over the reason by the fact that the idea of present good fills
the imagination more forcibly than the idea of good to come, and summons
persuasion, habit, and morals to the aid of the latter. We must endeavor
so to govern the passions (each of which combines in itself a masculine
impetuosity with a feminine weakness) that they shall take the part of
the reason instead of attacking it. Elsewhere Bacon gives (not entirely
unquestionable) directions concerning the art of making one's way. Acute
observations and ingenious remarks everywhere abound. In order to inform
one's self of a man's intentions and ends, it is necessary to "keep a good
mediocrity in liberty of speech, which invites a similar liberty, and in
secrecy, which induces trust." "In order to get on one must have a little
of the fool and not too much of the honest." "As the baggage is to an
army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared nor left behind, but it
hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth
the victory" (impedimenta--baggage and hindrance). On envy and malevolence
he says: "For men's minds will either feed upon their own good or upon
others' evil; ... and whoso is out of hope to attain another's virtue will
seek to come at even hand by depressing another's fortune."
[Footnote 1: Cf. Vorlaender, p. 267 seq]
In ethics, as in theoretical philosophy, Bacon demands the completion of
natural knowledge by revelation. The light of nature (the reason and the
conscience) is able only to convince us of sin and not to give us complete
information concerning our duty,--e.g. the lofty moral principle, Love
your enemies. Similarly, natural theology is quite sufficient to place
the existence of God beyond doubt, by reasoning from the order in nature
("slight tastes of philosophy may perchance move one to atheism but fuller
draughts lead back to religion"); but the doctrines of Christianity are
matters of faith. Religion and science are separate fields, any confusion
of which involves the danger of an heretical religion or a fabulous
philosophy. The more a principle of faith contradicts the reason, the
greater the obedience and the honor to God in accepting it.
