ball of two, without alluding
to the theory of the acceleration of falling bodies, which had been made
known by Galileo more than thirty years before. He proposes an inquiry with
regard to the lever--namely, whether in a balance with arms of different
length but equal weight the distance from the fulcrum has any effect upon
the inclination,--though the theory of the lever was as well understood in
his own time as it is now. In making an experiment {84} of his own to
ascertain the cause of the motion of a windmill, he overlooks an obvious
circumstance which makes the experiment inconclusive, and an equally
obvious variation of the same experiment which would have shown him that
his theory was false. He speaks of the poles of the earth as fixed, in a
manner which seems to imply that he was not acquainted with the precession
of the equinoxes; and in another place, of the north pole being above and
the south pole below, as a reason why in our hemisphere the north winds
predominate over the south."

Much of this was known before, but such a summary of Bacon's want of
knowledge of the science of his own time was never yet collected in one
place. We may add, that Bacon seems to have been as ignorant of
Wright's[126] memorable addition to the resources of navigation as of
Napier's addition to the means of calculation. Mathematics was beginning to
be the great instrument of exact inquiry: Bacon threw the science aside,
from ignorance, just at the time when his enormous sagacity, applied to
knowledge, would have made him see the part it was to play. If Newton had
taken Bacon for his master, not he, but somebody else, would have been
Newton.[127]

ON METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORIES.

There is an attempt at induction going on, which has yielded little or no
fruit, the observations made in the meteorological observatories. This
attempt is carried on in a manner which would have caused Bacon to dance
for joy; for he lived in times when Chancellors did dance. {85} Russia,
says M. Biot,[128] is covered by an army of meteorographs, with generals,
high officers, subalterns, and privates with fixed and defined duties of
observation. Other countries have also their systematic observations. And
what has come of it? Nothing, says M. Biot, and nothing will ever come of
it; the veteran mathematician and experimental philosopher declares, as
does Mr. Ellis, that no single branch of science has ever been fruitfully
explored in this way. There