(VII.) 16. _His Failure._--Since Bacon, with all his acuteness, had not divined circumstances so important in the formation of science, it is not wonderful that his attempt to reduce this process to a _Technical Form_ is of little value. In the first place, he says[179], we must prepare a natural and experimental history, good and sufficient; in the next place, the instances thus collected are to be arranged in Tables in some orderly way; and then we must apply a legitimate and true induction. And in his example[180], he first collects a great number of cases in which heat appears under various circumstances, which he calls "a Muster of Instances before the intellect," (_comparentia instantiarum ad intellectum_,) or a _Table of the Presence_ of the thing sought. He then adds a _Table of its Absence_ in proximate cases, containing instances where heat does not appear; then a _Table of Degrees_, in which it appears with greater or less intensity. He then adds[181], that we must try to exclude several obvious suppositions, which he does by reference to some of the instances he has collected; and this step he calls the _Exclusive_, or the _Rejection of Natures_. He then observes, (and justly,) that whereas truth emerges more easily from error than from confusion, we may, after this preparation, _give play to the intellect_, (fiat permissio intellectus,) and make an attempt at induction, liable afterwards to be corrected; and by this step, which he terms his _First Vindemiation_, or _Inchoate Induction_, he is led to the proposition concerning heat, which we have stated above. 17. In all the details of his example he is unfortunate. By proposing to himself to examine at once into the _nature_ of heat, instead of the laws of special classes of phenomena, he makes, as we have said, a fundamental mistake; which is the less surprising since he had before him so few examples of the right course in the previous history of science. But further, his collection of instances is very loosely brought together; for he includes in his list the _hot_ taste of aromatic plants, the _caustic_ effects of acids, and many other facts which cannot be ascribed to heat without a studious laxity in the use of the word. And when he comes to that point where he permits his intellect its range, the conception of _motion_ upon which it at once fastens, appears to be selected with little choice or skill, the suggestion being taken from flame[182], boiling liquids, a blown fire, and some other cases. If from such examples we could imagine heat to be motion, we ought at least to have some gradation to cases of heat where no motion is visible, as in a red-hot iron. It would seem that, after a large collection of instances had been looked at, the intellect, even in its first attempts, ought not to have dwelt upon such an hypothesis as this.