But deductive logic is the creation of Aristotle; and it was the authority of Aristotle that Bacon sought to subvert.  The inductive process is also old, of which Bacon is called the father.  How are these things to be reconciled and explained?  Wherein and how did Bacon adapt his method to the discovery of truth, which was his principal aim,—­that method which is the great cause of modern progress in science, the way to it being indicated by him pre-eminently?

The whole thing consists in this, that Bacon pointed out the right road to truth,—­as a board where two roads meet or diverge indicates the one which is to be followed.  He did not make a system, like Descartes or Spinoza or Newton:  he showed the way to make it on sound principles.  “He laid down a systematic analysis and arrangement of inductive evidence.”  The syllogism, the great instrument used by Aristotle and the School-men, “is, from its very nature, incompetent to prove the ultimate premises from which it proceeds; and when the truth of these remains doubtful, we can place no confidence in the conclusions drawn from them.”  Hence, the first step in the reform of science is to review its ultimate principles; and the first condition of a scientific method is that it shall be competent to conduct such an inquiry; and this method is applicable, not to physical science merely, but to the whole realm of knowledge.  This, of course, includes poetry, art, intellectual philosophy, and theology, as well as geology and chemistry.

And it is this breadth of inquiry—­directed to subjective as well as objective knowledge—­which made Bacon so great a benefactor.  The defect in Macaulay’s criticism is that he makes Bacon interested in mere outward phenomena, or matters of practical utility,—­a worldly utilitarian of whom Epicureans may be proud.  In reality he soared to the realm of Plato as well as of Aristotle.  Take, for instance, his Idola Mentis Humanae, or “Phantoms of the Human Mind,” which compose the best-known part of the “Novum Organum.”  “The Idols of the Tribe” would show the folly of attempting to penetrate further than the limits of the human faculties permit, as also “the liability of the intellect to be warped by the will and affections, and the like.”  The “Idols of the Den” have reference to “the tendency to notice differences rather than resemblances, or resemblances rather than differences, in the attachment to antiquity or novelty, in the partiality to minute or comprehensive investigations.”  “The Idols of the Market-Place” have reference to the tendency to confound words with things, which has ever marked controversialists in their learned disputations.  In what he here says about the necessity for accurate definitions, he reminds us of Socrates rather than a modern scientist; this necessity for accuracy applies to metaphysics as much as it does to physics.  “The Idols of the Theatre” have reference to perverse laws of demonstration which are the strongholds of error.  This school deals in speculations and experiments confined to a narrow compass, like those of the alchemists,—­too imperfect to elicit the light which should guide.