ough knowing absolutely nothing of the subject with
which they may be dealing, wish, nevertheless, to damage the author of
some view with which they think fit to disagree. What they do, then,
is not to go and learn something about the subject, which one would
naturally think the best way of fairly dealing with it; but they abuse
the originator of the view they question, in a general manner, and wind
up by saying that, "After all, you know, the principles and method
of this author are totally opposed to the canons of the Baconian
philosophy." Then everybody applauds, as a matter of course, and agrees
that it must be so. But if you were to stop them all in the middle of
their applause, you would probably find that neither the speaker nor his
applauders could tell you how or in what way it was so; neither the
one nor the other having the slightest idea of what they mean when they
speak of the "Baconian philosophy."

You will understand, I hope, that I have not the slightest desire to
join in the outcry against either the morals, the intellect, or the
great genius of Lord Chancellor Bacon. He was undoubtedly a very great
man, let people say what they will of him; but notwithstanding all that
he did for philosophy, it would be entirely wrong to suppose that the
methods of modern scientific inquiry originated with him, or with his
age; they originated with the first man, whoever he was; and indeed
existed long before him, for many of the essential processes of
reasoning are exerted by the higher order of brutes as completely and
effectively as by ourselves. We see in many of the brute creation the
exercise of one, at least, of the same powers of reasoning as that which
we ourselves employ.

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of
the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode
at which all phenomena are reasoned about, rendered precise and
exact. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of
difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those
of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of
a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the
operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis
by means of his balance and finely-graduated weights. It is not that
the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other,
differ in the principles of their constr