"The intellect is not to be suffered to act without its helps, but is continually to be assisted by some method or engine, which shall be as a guide to regulate its actions, so as that it shall not be able to act amiss. Of this engine, no man except the incomparable Verulam hath had any thoughts and he indeed hath promoted it to a very good pitch; but there is yet somewhat more to be added, which he seemed to want time to complete. By this, as by that {78} art of algebra in geometry, 'twill be very easy to proceed in any natural inquiry, regularly and certainly.... For as 'tis very hard for the most acute wit to find out any difficult problem in geometry without the help of algebra ... and altogether as easy for the meanest capacity acting by that method to complete and perfect it, so will it be in the inquiry after natural knowledge." Bacon did not live to mature the whole of this plan. Are we really to believe that if he had completed the _Instauratio_ we who write this--and who feel ourselves growing bigger as we write it--should have been on a level with Newton in physical discovery? Bacon asks this belief of us, and does not get it. But it may be said, Your business is with what he _did_ leave, and with its consequences. Be it so. Mr. Ellis says: "That his method is impracticable cannot, I think, be denied, if we reflect not only that it never has produced any result, but also that the process by which scientific truths have been established cannot be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance with it." That this is very true is well known to all who have studied the history of discovery: those who deny it are bound to establish either that some great discovery has been made by Bacon's method--we mean by the part peculiar to Bacon--or, better still, to show that some new discovery can be made, by actually making it. No general talk about _induction_: no reliance upon the mere fact that certain experiments or observations have been made; let us see where _Bacon's induction_ has been actually used or can be used. Mere induction, _enumeratio simplex_, is spoken of by himself with contempt, as utterly incompetent. For Bacon knew well that a thousand instances may be contradicted by the thousand and first: so that no enumeration of instances, however large, is "sure demonstration," so long any are left.