ew method, may in its entirety, as a ministration to
the reason, be called a logic; but it differs widely from the ordinary or
school logic in end, method and form. Its aim is to acquire command over
nature by knowledge, and to invent new arts, whereas the old logic strove
only after dialectic victories and the discovery of new arguments. In
method the difference is even more fundamental. Hitherto the mode of
demonstration had been by the syllogism; but the syllogism is, in many
respects, an incompetent weapon. It is compelled to accept its first
principles on trust from the science in which it is employed; it cannot
cope with the subtlety of nature; and it is radically vitiated by being
founded on hastily and inaccurately abstracted notions of things. For a
syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are
the symbols of notions. Now the first step in accurate progress from sense
to reason, or true philosophy, is to frame a _bona notio_ or accurate
conception of the thing; but the received logic never does this. It flies
off at once from experience and particulars to the highest and most general
propositions, and from these descends, by the use of middle terms, to
axioms of lower generality. Such a mode of procedure may be called
_anticipatio naturae_ (for in it reason is allowed to prescribe to things),
and is opposed to the true method, the _interpretatio naturae_, in which
reason follows and obeys nature, discovering her secrets by obedience and
submission to rule. Lastly, the very form of induction that has been used
by logicians in the collection of their instances is a weak and useless
thing. It is a mere enumeration of a few known facts, makes no use of
exclusions or rejections, concludes precariously, and is always liable to
be overthrown by a negative instance.[79] In radical opposition to this
method the Baconian induction begins by supplying helps and guides to the
senses, whose unassisted information could not be relied on. Notions were
formed carefully, and not till after a certain process of induction was
completed.[80] The formation of axioms was to be carried on by a gradually
ascending scale. "Then and only then may we hope well of the sciences, when
in a just scale of ascent and by successive steps, not interrupted or
broken, we rise from particulars to lesser axioms; and then to middle
axioms, one above the other; and last of all to the most general."[81]
Finally the very form of