sted, the need
for rejecting rash generalization, and the necessity for a critical
analysis of experience, are as true and valuable now as they were then.
Progress in scientific discovery is made mainly, if not solely, by the
employment of hypothesis, and for that no code of rules can be laid down
such as Bacon had devised. Yet the framing of hypothesis is no mere random
guesswork; it is left not to the imagination alone, but to the _scientific
imagination_. There is required in the process not merely a preliminary
critical induction, but a subsequent experimental comparison, verification
or proof, the canons of which can be laid down with precision. To formulate
and show grounds for these laws is to construct a philosophy of induction,
and it must not be forgotten that the first step towards the accomplishment
of the task was made by Bacon when he introduced and gave prominence to the
powerful logical instrument of exclusion or elimination.

It is curious and significant that in the domain of the moral and
metaphysical sciences his influence has been perhaps more powerful, and his
authority has been more frequently appealed to, than in that of the
physical. This is due, not so much to his expressed opinion that the
inductive method was applicable to all the sciences,[97] as to the
generally practical, or, one may say, [v.03 p.0151] _positive_ spirit of
his system. Theological questions, which had tortured the minds of
generations, are by him relegated from the province of reason to that of
faith. Even reason must be restrained from striving after ultimate truth;
it is one of the errors of the human intellect that it will not rest in
general principles, but must push its investigations deeper. Experience and
observation are the only remedies against prejudice and error. Into
questions of metaphysics, as commonly understood, Bacon can hardly be said
to have entered, but a long line of thinkers have drawn inspiration from
him, and it is not without justice that he has been looked upon as the
originator and guiding spirit of what is known as the empirical school.

_Bacon's Influence._--It is impossible within our limits to do more than
indicate the influence which Bacon's views have had on subsequent thinkers.
The most valuable and complete discussion of the subject is contained in T.
Fowler's edition of the _Novum Organum_ (introd. s. 14). It is there argued
that, both in philosophy and in natural science, Bacon's influenc