nd
or aim that Bacon proposed for the inquirer. In this he was not in
advance of his age; on the contrary, he was probably behind Roger
Bacon, and certainly far behind such patient and concentrated thinkers
as Copernicus, Gilbert, and Galileo--no discredit to the grandeur of
his intellect when we remember that science was only his recreation,
the indulgence of his leisure from Law and State.

In effect, his method came to this. Collect as many instances as you
can of the effect to be investigated, and the absence of it where you
would expect it, arrange them methodically, then put aside guesses
at the cause which are obviously unsuitable, then draw up a probably
explanation, then proceed to make this exact by further comparison
with instances. It is when we consider what he directed the inquirer
to search for that we see why so orderly a method was little likely to
be fruitful.

He starts from the principle that the ultimate object of all knowledge
is use, practice (_scimus ut operemur_). We want to know how Nature
produces things that we may produce them for ourselves, if we can.
The inquirer's first aim, therefore, should be to find out how the
qualities of bodies are produced, to discover the _formae_ or formal
causes of each quality. An example shows what he meant by this. Gold
is a crowd or conjugation of various qualities or "natures"; it is
yellow, it has a certain weight, it is malleable or ductile to a
certain degree, it is not volatile (loses nothing under fire), it can
be melted, it is soluble. If we knew the _forma_ or formal cause of
each of those qualities, we could make gold, provided the causes were
within our control. The first object, then, of the investigator of
Nature is to discover such _formae_, in order to be able to effect the
transformation of bodies. It may be desirable also to know the _latens
processus_, any steps not apparent to the senses by which a body grows
from its first germs or rudiments, and the _schematismus_ or ultimate
inner constitution of the body. But the discovery of the _formae_ of
the constituent qualities (_naturae singulae_), heat, colour, density or
rarity, sweetness, saltness, and so forth, is the grand object of the
Interpreter of Nature; and it is for this that Bacon prescribed his
method.

The _Sylva Sylvarum_, or Natural History, a miscellaneous collection
of facts and fictions, observations and traditions, with guesses
at the explanation of them, affords us a me