; neither the
one nor the other having the slightest idea of what they mean when they
speak of the "Baconian philosophy."

You will understand, I hope, that I have not the slightest desire to
join in the outcry against either the morals, the intellect, or the
great genius of Lord Chancellor Bacon. He was undoubtedly a very great
man, let people say what they will of him; but notwithstanding all that
he did for philosophy, it would be entirely wrong to suppose that the
methods of modern scientific inquiry originated with him, or with his
age; they originated with the first man, whoever he was; and indeed
existed long before him, for many of the essential processes of
reasoning are exerted by the higher order of brutes as completely and
effectively as by ourselves. We see in many of the brute creation the
exercise of one, at least, of the same powers of reasoning as that which
we ourselves employ.

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of
the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode
at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and
exact. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of
difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those
of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of
a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the
operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis
by means of his balance and finely-graduated weights. It is not that
the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other,
differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but
the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, and
of course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight.

You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar
example. You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of science
work by means of Induction and Deduction, and that by the help of these
operations, they, in a sort of sense, wring from Nature certain other
things, which are called Natural Laws, and Causes, and that out of
these, by some cunning skill of their own, they build up Hypotheses and
Theories. And it is imagined by many, that the operations of the common
mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they
have to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft.
To h