From this view of the subject we shall now proceed to examine the Baconian process itself, and consider if it possesses any merit as an artificial method of discovery, or if it is at all capable of being employed, for this purpose, even in the humblest walks of scientific inquiry. The process of Lord Bacon was, we believe, never tried by any philosopher but himself. As the subject of its application, he selected that of heat. With his usual erudition, he collected all the facts which science could supply,—he arranged them in tables,—he cross-questioned them with all the subtlety of a pleader,—he combined them with all the sagacity of a judge,—and he conjured with them by all the magic of his exclusive processes. But, after all this display of physical logic, nature thus interrogated was still silent. The oracle which he had himself established refused to give its responses, and the ministering priest was driven with discomfiture from his own shrine. This example, in short, of the application of his system, will remain to future ages as a memorable instance of the absurdity of attempting to fetter discovery by any artificial rules. Nothing even in mathematical science can be more certain than that a collection of scientific facts are of themselves incapable of leading to discovery, or to the determination of general laws, unless they contain the predominating fact or relation in which the discovery mainly resides. A vertical column of arch-stones possesses more strength than the same materials arranged in an arch without the key-stone. However nicely they are adjusted, and however nobly the arch may spring, it never can possess either equilibrium or stability. In this comparison all the facts are supposed to be necessary to the final result; but, in the inductive method, it is impossible to ascertain the relative importance of any facts, or even to determine if the facts have any value at all, till the master-fact which constitutes the discovery has crowned the zealous efforts of the aspiring philosopher. The mind then returns to the dark and barren waste over which it has been hovering; and by the guidance of this single torch it embraces, under the comprehensive grasp of general principles, the multifarious and insulated phenomena which had formerly neither value nor connexion. Hence it must be obvious to the most superficial thinker, that discovery consists either in the detection of some concealed relation—some deep-seated affinity which baffles ordinary research, or in the discovery of some simple fact which is connected by slender ramifications with the subject to be investigated; but which, when once detected, carries us back by its divergence to all the phenomena which it embraces and explains.