supposes to be its central
and characteristic innovation. Mr. Ellis finds it in an improvement and
perfection of logical machinery. Mr. Spedding finds it in the formation
of a great "natural and experimental history," a vast collection of
facts in every department of nature, which was to be a more important
part of his philosophy than the _Novum Organum_ itself. Both of them
think that as he went on, the difficulties of the work grew upon him,
and caused alterations in his plans, and we are reminded that "there is
no didactic exposition of his method in the whole of his writings," and
that "this has not been sufficiently remarked by those who have spoken
of his philosophy."

In the first place, the kind of intellectual instrument which he
proposed to construct was a mistake. His great object was to place the
human mind "on a level with things and nature" (_ut faciamus intellectum
humanum rebus et naturae parem_), and this could only be done by a
revolution in methods. The ancients had all that genius could do for
man; but it was a matter, he said, not of the strength and fleetness of
the running, but of the rightness of the way. It was a new method,
absolutely different from anything known, which he proposed to the
world, and which should lead men to knowledge, with the certainty and
with the impartial facility of a high-road. The Induction which he
imagined to himself as the contrast to all that had yet been tried was
to have two qualities. It was to end, by no very prolonged or difficult
processes, in absolute certainty. And next, it was to leave very little
to the differences of intellectual power: it was to level minds and
capacities. It was to give all men the same sort of power which a pair
of compasses gives the hand in drawing a circle. "_Absolute certainty,
and a mechanical mode of procedure_" says Mr. Ellis, "_such that all men
should be capable of employing it, are the two great features of the
Baconian system_." This he thought possible, and this he set himself to
expound--"a method universally applicable, and in all cases infallible."
In this he saw the novelty and the vast importance of his discovery. "By
this method all the knowledge which the human mind was capable of
receiving might be attained, and attained without unnecessary labour."
It was a method of "a demonstrative character, with the power of
reducing all minds to nearly the same level." The conception, indeed, of
a "great Art of knowledge," of