PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES. 20,9
course; as I have said, we must begin by experiment,and endeavour by its means to discover general prin-ciples.”
Again ,—“ Theory is the general: experiments are thesoldiers. The interpreter of the works of nature is ex-periment : that is never wrong. It is our judgmentwhich is sometimes deceived, because we are expectingresults which experiment refuses to give. We mustconsult experiment, and vary the circumstances, till wehave deduced general rules, for it alone can furnish uswith them. But you will ask, What is the use of thesegeneral rules ? I answer, that they direct us in our en-quiries into nature and the operations of art. They keepus from deceiving ourselves and others by promisingourselves results which we can never obtain.” *
We have been led to refer to these views more par-ticularly, because some modern writers of considerableeminence have been rather disposed to undervalue thecharacter of Bacon’s writings, and to deny their exten-sive or beneficial influence on the researches of subse-quent philosophers. It has been alleged that Galileo ,Copernicus, and even Kepler , had exhibited perfect ex-amples of the inductive method of philosophising, andthat Leonardo da Vinci , in the passages just quoted, aswell as Galileo and some other authors of that period,have, in fact, in such expressions delivered a brief butcomplete summary of all the essentials of the inductivemethod. Even the alchemists of that day, absurd andvisionary as were the objects of their pursuit, yet, itis urged, in the indefatigable toils of their laboratories,at least showed that they considered the whole value oftheir science to rest upon experiments. Kepler , in thewildest of his reveries, submitted them most scrupulouslyto the test of accordance with observation, and unhesi-tatingly sacrificed the labours of years if the resultsdid not stand the test. Thus, it is said, those philo-sophers had all thrown off the yoke of the schools, and
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i * Venturi, Essai sur les Ouvrages de L. da Vinci, p. 32.
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