of a practised
lawyer might lead him? In the case which is before the Court, generally
speaking, truth lurks somewhere about the facts, and the elimination of all
error will show it in the residuum. The two senses of the word _law_ come
in so as to look almost like a play upon words. The judge can apply the law
so soon as the facts are settled: the physical philosopher has to deduce
the law from the facts. Wait, says the judge, until the facts are
determined: did the prisoner take the goods with felonious intent? did the
defendant give what amounts to a warranty? or the like. Wait, says Bacon,
until all the facts, or all the obtainable facts, are brought in: apply my
rules of separation to the facts, and the result shall come out as easily
as by ruler and compasses. We think it possible that Harvey might allude to
the legal character of Bacon's notions: we can hardly conceive so acute a
man, after seeing what manner of writer Bacon was, meaning only that he was
a lawyer and had better stick to his business. We do ourselves believe that
Bacon's philosophy {80} more resembles the action of mind of a common-law
judge--not a Chancellor--than that of the physical inquirers who have been
supposed to follow in his steps. It seems to us that Bacon's argument is,
there can be nothing of law but what must be either perceptible, or
mechanically deducible, when all the results of law, as exhibited in
phenomena, are before us. Now the truth is, that the physical philosopher
has frequently to conceive law which never was in his previous thought--to
educe the unknown, not to choose among the known. Physical discovery would
be very easy work if the inquirer could lay down his this, his that, and
his t'other, and say, "Now, one of these it must be; let us proceed to try
which." Often has he done this, and failed; often has the truth turned out
to be neither this, that, nor t'other. Bacon seems to us to think that the
philosopher is a judge who has to choose, upon ascertained facts, which of
known statutes is to rule the decision: he appears to us more like a person
who is to write the statute-book, with no guide except the cases and
decisions presented in all their confusion and all their conflict.

Let us take the well-known first aphorism of the _Novum Organum_:

"Man being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so
much, and so much only, as he has observed in fact or in thought of the
course of nature: beyond th