Another of the Editors of this edition (Mr. Spedding) fixes his attention upon another of the features of the method of discovery proposed by Bacon, and is disposed to think that the proposed method has never yet had justice done it, because it has not been tried in the way and on the scale that Bacon proposes[199]. Bacon recommended that a great collection of facts should be at once made and accumulated, regarding every branch of human knowledge; and conceived that, when this had been done by common observers, philosophers might extract scientific truths from this mass of facts by the application of a right method. This separation of the offices of the observer and discoverer, Mr. Spedding thinks is shown to be possible by such practical examples as meteorological observations, made by ordinary observers, and reduced to tables and laws by a central calculator; by hydrographical observations made by ships provided with proper instructions, and reduced to general laws by the man of science in his study; by magnetical observations made by many persons in every part of the world, and reduced into subservience to theory by mathematicians at home. And to this our reply will be, in the terms which the history of all the Sciences has taught us, that such methods of procedure as this do not belong to the _Epoch of Discovery_, but to the Period of _verification_ and _application_ of the discovery which follows. When a theory has been established in its general form, our knowledge of the distribution of its phenomena in time and space can be much promoted by ordinary observers scattered over the earth, and succeeding each other in time, provided they are furnished with instruments and methods of observation, duly constructed on the principles of science; but such observers cannot in any degree supersede the discoverer who is first to establish the theory, and to introduce into the facts a new principle of order. When the laws of nature have been caught sight of, much may be done, even by ordinary observers, in verifying and exactly determining them; but when a real discovery is to be made, this separation of the observer and the theorist is not possible. In those cases, the questioning temper, the busy suggestive mind, is needed at every step, to direct the operating hand or the open gaze. No possible accumulation of facts about mixture and heat, collected in the way of blind trial, could have led to the doctrines of chemistry, or crystallography, or the atomic theory, or voltaic and chemical and magnetic polarity, or physiology, or any other science. Indeed not only is an existing theory requisite to supply the observer with instruments and methods, but without theory he cannot even describe his observations. He says that he mixes an acid and an alkali; but what is an acid? What is an alkali? How does he know them? He classifies crystals according to their forms: but till he has learnt what is