o refer to
Bacon's experimental principles.

If the foregoing examples are held sufficient to establish the influence of
Bacon on the intellectual development of his immediate successors, it
follows that the whole trend of typically English thought, not only in
natural science, but also in mental, moral and political philosophy, is the
logical fulfilment of Baconian principles. He argued against the tyranny of
authority, the vagaries of unfettered imagination and the academic aims of
unpractical dialectic; the vital energy and the reasoned optimism of his
language entirely outweigh the fact that his contributions to the stock of
actual scientific knowledge were practically inconsiderable. It may be
freely admitted that in the domain of logic there is nothing in the
_Organum_ that has not been more instructively analysed either by Aristotle
himself or in modern works; at the same time, there is probably no work
which is a better and more stimulating introduction to logical study. Its
terse, epigrammatic phrases sink into the fibre of the mind, and are a
healthy warning against crude, immature generalization.

While, therefore, it is a profound mistake to regard Bacon as a great
constructive philosopher, or even as a lonely pioneer of modern thought, it
is quite unfair to speak of him as a trifler. His great work consists in
the fact that he summed up the faults which the widening of knowledge had
disclosed in medieval thought, and in this sense he stands high among those
who were in many parts of 16th-century Europe striving towards a new
intellectual activity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Editions._--The classical edition is that of R. L. Ellis, J.
Spedding and D. D. Heath, 1st ed., 1857; 2nd ed., 1870 (vols. i.-iii.,
philosophical writings; iv.-v., translations; vi.-vii., literary and
professional works). B. Montagu's edition (17 vols., 1825-1834) is full but
unscholarly. An extremely useful reprint (in one volume) of the
philosophical works (with a few not strictly philosophical), based on the
first Ellis-Spedding edition, was published by J. M. Robertson (London,
1905); besides the original introductions, it contains a useful summary by
the editor of the various problems of Bacon's life and thought. Numerous
cheap editions have lately been published, _e.g._ in the "World's Classics"
(1901), and "New Universal Library" series (1905); Sidney Lee, _English
Works of Francis Bacon_ (London, 1905).

Of particular works there are num