Bacon, therefore, according to the view now presented, was wrong both as to his object and as to his method. He was wrong in taking for his object the essences of things,--the causes of abstract properties: for these man cannot, or can very rarely discover; and all Bacon's ingenuity in enumerating and classifying these essences and abstract properties has led, and could lead, to no result. The vast results of modern science have been obtained, not by seeking and finding the essences of things, but by exploring the laws of phenomena and the causes of those laws. And Bacon's method, as well as his object, is vitiated by a pervading error:--the error of supposing that to be done by method which must be done by mind;--that to be done by rule which must be done by a flight beyond rule;--that to be mainly negative which is eminently positive;--that to depend on other men which must depend on the discoverer himself;--that to be mere prose which must have a dash of poetry;--that to be a work of mere labour which must be also a work of genius. Mr. Ellis has seen very clearly and explained very candidly that this method thus recommended by Bacon has not led to discovery. "It is," he says, "neither to the technical part of his method nor to the details of his view of the nature and progress of science, that his great fame is justly owing. His merits are of another kind. They belong to the spirit rather than to the positive precepts of his philosophy." As the reader of the last chapter will see, this amounts to much the same as the account which I had given of the positive results of Bacon's method, and the real value of that portion of his philosophy which he himself valued most. But still there remain, as I have also noted, portions of Bacon's speculations which have a great and enduring value, namely, his doctrine that Science is the Interpretation of Nature, his distinction of this Interpretation of Nature from the vicious and premature Anticipation of Nature which had generally prevailed till then; and the recommendation of a graduated and successive induction by which alone the highest and most general truths were to be reached. These are points which he urges with great clearness and with great earnestness; and these are important points in the true philosophy of discovery.