THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

FRANCIS BACON 103
perhaps inadequate, recognition of that need for hypothesis, experiment
and deduction which some of Bacon's critics suppose him to have entirely
overlooked.) We must go to nature instead of to books, traditions and
authorities; we must "put nature on the rack and compel her to bear
witness" even against herself, so that we may control her to our ends.
We must gather together from every quarter a "natural history" of the
world, built by the united research of Europe's scientists. We must have
induction.
But induction does not mean "simple enumeration" of all the data;
conceivably, this might be endless, and useless; no mass of material can by
itself make science. This would be like "chasing a quarry over an open
country"; we must narrow and enclose our field in order to capture our
prey. The method of induction must include a technique for the classification
of data and the elimination of hypotheses ; so that by the progressive
canceling of possible explanations one only shall at last remain. Per-
haps the most useful item in this technique is the "table of more or less,"
which lists instances in which two qualities or conditions increase or
decrease together, and so reveals, presumably, a causal relation between
the simultaneously varying phenomena. So Bacon, asking, What is heat?
seeks for some factor that increases with the increase of heat, and
decreases with its decrease; he finds, after long analysis, an exact correla-
tion between heat and motion; and his conclusion that heat is a form of
motion constitutes one of his few specific contributions to natural science.
By this insistent accumulation and analysis of data we corne, in Bacon's
phrase, to the form of the phenomenon which we study, to its secret
nature and its inner essence. The theory of forms in Bacon is very much
like the theory of ideas in Plato: a metaphysics of science. "When we
speak of forms we mean nothing else than those laws and regulations of
nature. . . . The
simple action which arrange and constitute any simple
form of heat or the form of light, therefore, means no more than the
94
law of heat or the law of light." (In a similar strain Spinoza was to say
that the law of the circle is its substance.) "For although nothing exists
in nature except individual bodies exhibiting clear individual effects ac-
cording to particular laws; yet, in each branch of learning, those very
laws their investigation, discovery and development are the founda-
95
tion both of theory and of practice." Of theory and of practice; one
without the other is useless and perilous; knowledge that does not generate
achievement is a pale and bloodless thing, unworthy of mankind.
We strive to learn the forms of things not for the sake of the forms but
because by knowing the forms, the laws, we may remake things in the
image of our desire. So we study mathematics in order to reckon quantities
and build bridges; we study psychology in order to find our way in the
jungle of society. When science has sufficiently ferreted out the forms of
^ ii, 13, 17.
K Ibid. 9 ii, 2.