After a careful perusal of M. Fischer’s work, we believe that it will not only serve in Germany as a useful introduction to the study of Bacon, but that it will be read with interest and advantage by many persons in England who are already acquainted with the chief works of the philosopher. The analysis which he gives of Bacon’s philosophy is accurate and complete; and, without indulging in any lengthy criticisms, he has thrown much light on several important points. He first discusses the aim of his philosophy, and characterizes it as Discovery in general, as the conquest of nature by man (_Regnum hominis, interpretatio naturæ_). He then enters into the means which it supplies for accomplishing this conquest, and which consist chiefly in experience:— “The chief object of Bacon’s philosophy is the establishment and extension of the dominion of man. The means of accomplishing this we may call culture, or the application of physical powers toward human purposes. But there is no such culture without discovery, which produces the means of culture; no discovery without science, which understands the laws of nature; no science without natural science; no natural science without an interpretation of nature; and this can only be accomplished according to the measure of our experience.” M. Fischer then proceeds to discuss what he calls the negative or destructive part of Bacon’s philosophy (_pars destruens_),—that is to say, the means by which the human mind should be purified and freed from all preconceived notions before it approaches the interpretation of nature. He carries us through the long war which Bacon commenced against the idols of traditional or scholastic science. We see how the _idola tribus_, the _idola specus_, the _idola fori_, and the _idola theatri_, are destroyed by his iconoclastic philosophy. After all these are destroyed, there remains nothing but uncertainty and doubt; and it is in this state of nudity, approaching very nearly to the _tabula rasa_ of Locke, that the human mind should approach the new temple of nature. Here lies the radical difference between Bacon and Des Cartes, between Realism and Idealism. Des Cartes also, like Bacon, destroys all former knowledge. He proves that we know nothing for certain. But after he has deprived the human mind of all its imaginary riches, he does not lead it on, like Bacon, to a study of nature, but to a study of itself as the only subject which can be known for certain, _Cogito, ergo sum_. His philosophy leads to a study of the fundamental laws of knowing and being; that of Bacon enters at once into the gates of nature, with the innocence of a child (to use his own expression) who enters the kingdom of God. Bacon speaks, indeed, of a _Philosophia prima_ as a kind of introduction to Divine, Natural, and Human Philosophy; but he does not discuss in this preliminary chapter the problem of the possibility of knowledge, nor was it with him the right