Nor did Bacon rank high even as a natural philosopher or physicist in his
own age: he seems to have refused credence to the discoveries of
Copernicus and Galileo, which had stirred the scientific world into great
activity before his day; and his investigations in botany and vegetable
physiology are crude and full of errors.
His mind, eminently philosophic, searched for facts only to establish
principles and discover laws; and he was often impatient or obstinate in
this search, feeling that it trammelled him in his haste to reach
conclusions.
In the consideration of the reason, he unduly despised the _Organon_ of
Aristotle, which, after much indignity and misapprehension, still remains
to elucidate the universal principle of reasoning, and published his new
organon--_Novum Organum_--as a sort of substitute for it: Induction
unjustly opposed to the Syllogism. In what, then, consists that wonderful
excellence, that master-power which has made his name illustrious?
HIS FAME.--I. He labored earnestly to introduce, in the place of fanciful
and conjectural systems--careful, patient investigation: the principle of
the procurement of well-known facts, in order that, by severe induction,
philosophy might attain to general laws, and to a classification of the
sciences.
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