We may reply that Bacon's philosophy, in its effect upon his readers in general, does _not_ give due weight or due attention to the ideal element of our knowledge. He is considered as peculiarly and eminently the asserter of the value of experiment and observation. He is always understood to belong to the experiential, as opposed to the ideal school. He is held up in contrast to Plato and others who love to dwell upon that part of knowledge which has its origin in the intellect of man. 11. Nor can it be denied that Bacon has, in the finished part of his _Novum Organon_, put prominently forwards the necessary dependence of all our knowledge upon Experience, and said little of its dependence, equally necessary, upon the Conceptions which the intellect itself supplies. It will appear, however, on a close examination, that he was by no means insensible or careless of this internal element of all connected speculation. He held the balance, with no partial or feeble hand, between phenomena and ideas. He urged the Colligation of Facts, but he was not the less aware of the value of the Explication of Conceptions. 12. This appears plainly from some remarkable Aphorisms in the _Novum Organon_. Thus, in noticing the causes of the little progress then made by science[173], he states this:--"In the current Notions, all is unsound, whether they be logical or physical. _Substance_, _quality_, _action_, _passion_, even _being_, are not good Conceptions; still less are _heavy_, _light_, _dense_, _rare_, _moist_, _dry_, _generation_, _corruption_, _attraction_, _repulsion_, _element_, _matter_, _form_, and others of that kind; all are fantastical and ill-defined." And in his attempt to exemplify his own system, he hesitates[174] in accepting or rejecting the notions of _elementary_, _celestial_, _rare_, as belonging to fire, since, as he says, they are vague and ill-defined notions (_notiones vagæ nec bene terminatæ_). In that part of his work which appears to be completed, there is not, so far as I have noticed, any attempt to fix and define any notions thus complained of as loose and obscure. But yet such an undertaking appears to have formed part of his plan; and in the _Abecedarium Naturæ_[175], which consists of the heads of various portions of his great scheme, marked by letters of the alphabet, we find the titles of a series of dissertations "On the Conditions of Being," which must have had for their object the elucidation of divers Notions essential to science, and which would have been contributions to the Explication of Conceptions, such as we have attempted in a former part of this work. Thus some of the subjects of these dissertations are;--Of Much and Little;--Of Durable and Transitory;--Of Natural and Monstrous;--Of Natural and Artificial. When the philosopher of induction came to discuss these, considered as _conditions of existence_, he could not do otherwise than develope, limit, methodize, and define the Ideas involved in these Notions,