have we divers inventors of our own, of excellent works: which, since you have not seen, it were too long to make descriptions of them and besides, in the right understanding of those descriptions, you might easily err; for upon every invention of value we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honourable reward. These statues are some of brass; some of marble and touchstone; some of cedar, and other special woods, gilt and adorned; some of iron; some of silver; some of gold.

"We have certain hymns and services, which we say daily, of. laud and thanks to God for his marvellous works; and forms of prayers, imploring his aid and blessing for the illumination of our labours, and the turning of them into good and holy uses."

Important as is the power of invention, and highly as it is estimated, it seems a matter of astonishment, that, whilst there is a systematic mode of proceeding in all other arts and sciences, the art of invention is either wholly disregarded, or regarded as chimerical. The modern metaphysician, like the alchemists of old, will labour in his pursuit with unwearied perseverance and with eternal hope: blaming his own errors when unsuccessful: renewing and repeating his inquiries, and feeding his mind with the slightest appearance of any thing new. He will search what has been said by others: he will add his thoughts to their discoveries: and, with great struggle of mind, solicit and invoke his own spirit to deliver him oracles: but, proceeding without chart or compass to direct his course, it depends on accident and his own acuteness, whether he seizes some straggling truth, or is himself bewildered and lost.

The experimental philosopher also, like the alchemists of old, when in search of any truth, the attractive power, for instance, of the magnet, will labour upon it with unremitted industry, and endeavour to discover the properties in the stone itself: as if attraction, instead of being common to all nature, were some property peculiar to this substance, and confined as a kernel within its boundaries: although, centuries ago, inquirers were admonished by Lord Bacon, that the nature of anything was seldom to be found in the thing itself: and, in illustration of this general truth, foretold that the laws of the heavenly bodies would be discovered, as they were afterwards discovered by Newton, not in the bodies themselves, but in the bodies upon the earth.

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Whoever, (he says) shall reject the fained divorces of superlunary and sublunary bodies; and shall intentively observe the appetencies of matter, and the most universal passions, (which in either globe are exceeding potent, and transverberate the universal nature of things) he shall receive cleere information concerning celestial matters from the things seen here with us: and contrariwise, from these motions which are practised in heaven, he shall learn many observations

which now are latent, touching the motions of bodies here below: not only so far as these inferiour motions are moderated by superior, but in regard they have a mutual intercourse by passions common to them both."

And again,

"We must openly profess, that our hope of discovering the truth with regard to the celestial bodies, depends upon the observation of the common properties, or the passions and appetites, of the matter of both states; for, as to the separation that is supposed betwixt the ætherial and sublunary bodies, it seems to me no more than a fiction, and a degree of superstition mixed with rashness, &c.—our chiefest hope, and dependance in the consideration of the celestial bodies, is, therefore, placed in physical reasons, though not such as are commonly so called: but their laws, which no diversity of place or region can abolish, break through, disturb or alter."

There is no disunion in the works of nature, their partitions are as lines and veins; not as sections and separations; and there is the same spirit moving upon them all.

"All tangible bodies," says Bacon, "contain a spirit covered over, enveloped with the grosser body. There is no known body, in the upper parts of the earth, without its spirit; whether it be generated by the attenuating and concocting power of the celestial warmth, or otherwise for the pores of tangible bodies are not a vacuum; but either contain air, or the peculiar spirit of the substance, and this not a vis, an energy, a soul, or a fiction; but a real, subtile, and invisible body, circumscribed by place and dimension."

Such was the language of Bacon two centuries ago; the same sentiments have lately appeared in another form, in the works of one of our modern poets.

"To every form of being is assign'd
An active principle howe'er remov'd
From sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures, in the stars
Of azure heav'n, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, and every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters and the invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing or with evil mix'd:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude, from link to link
It circulates the soul of all the worlds."

Excursion, page 387.

To assist in forming an art of invention, to assist in con ducting the mind in the pursuit of truth, by certain laws orderly and consequentially, and so to render the human understanding equal to things and to nature, is the object of the Novum Organum.

The Novum Organum is divisible into two parts: of which the first is introductory to the art of invention, and both, to use Bacon's own words, "I report deficient."

A perfect work upon the Art of Invention, or on the Conduct of the Understanding in the discovery of truth, is, it seems, susceptible of a fourfold division, of which the three first are introductory.

"As the commander of an army, before he commences an attack, considers the strength and number of his troops, both regular and allies-the spirit by which they are animated, whether they are lions or sheep in the lion's skin:-- the power of the enemy to which he is opposed; their walled towns, their stored arsenals and armories, their horses and chariots of war, elephants, ordnance and artillery, and their races of men ;and then in what mode he shall commence his attack and proceed in the battle: so before man directs his strength against nature, and endeavours to take her high towers and dismantle her fortified holds, and thus enlarge the borders of his dominion as far as Almighty God of his goodness shall permit, it behoves him well to estimate

"1st. His powers for the discovery of truth.

"2d. His different motives for the exercise of his powers. "3rd. The obstacles to which he is opposed, and

"4th. The mode in which he can exert his powers with

most efficacy."

Upon each of the three first parts, which are only introductory, the Novum Organum contains a few and only a few observations.

With respect to the enumeration and excellencies of our powers, Bacon is wholly silent. Without exhibiting even a sketch of our faculties, he contents himself with warning his readers of some of our defects. In the second part of the Novum Organum, as if in defiance of all arrangement, he, without any notice of their perfections, states some of the defects of our senses whilst, on the other hand, in the New Atlantis, he is copious in suggesting expedients for the improvement of their excellencies. He says,

"We have also perspective houses, where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations; and of all colours; and out of things uncoloured and transparent, we can represent unto you all several colours; not in rain-bows, (as it is in gems and prisms,) but of them

selves single. We represent also multiplications of light, which we carry to great distance; and make so sharp, as to discern small points and lines: also all colorations of lights; all delusions and deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions, colours: all demonstrations of shadows. We find also divers means yet unknown to you, producing of light, originally from divers bodies. We procure means of seeing objects afar off; as in the heavens and remote places; and represent things near as far off; and things far off as near; making feigned distances. We have also glasses and means, to see small and minute bodies, perfectly and distinctly; as the shapes and colours of small flies and worms, grains and flaws in gems, which cannot otherwise be seen; observations in urine and blood, not otherwise to be seen. We make artificial rain-bows, halos, and circles about light. We represent also all manner of reflections, refractions, and multiplications of visual beams of objects.

"We have also sound-houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, and some sweeter than any you have together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds, extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps, which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it: and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller, and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound, from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.

"We have also perfume-houses, wherewith we join also practices of taste. We multiply smells, which may seem strange. We imitate smells, making all smells to breathe out of other mixtures than those that give them We make divers imitations of taste likewise, so that they will deceive any man's taste."

The defects of the senses noticed in the Novum Organum are as follows.

Things escape the senses, because the object is not sufficient in quantity to strike the sense: as all minute bodies-because the percussion of the object is too great to be endured by the sense: as the form of the sun when looking directly at it in mid-day-because the time is not proportionate to actuate the sense; as the motion of a bullet in the air or the quick circular motion of a fire-brand, which are too fast: or the hour-hand of a common clock, which is too slow:-from the distance of the object as to place: as the size of the celestial bodies and the size and nature of all distant bodies-from prepossession by another object; as one powerful smell renders other smells in the same room imperceptible-from the interruption of interposing bodies; as

the internal parts of animals: and, because the object is unfit to make an impression upon the sense: as the air or the invisible and untangible spirit which is included in every living body."

For each of these defects he suggests appropriate remedies. We must confine ourselves to the last: which, from its being noticed by Bacon in all his works, may, perhaps, not be deemed undeserving peculiar consideration. He says,

"Things escape the senses, because the object is unfit to make an impression upon the sense; as the air or the invisible and untangible spirit which is included in every living body."

rum.

The same sentiments may be found in the Sylva Sylva-
Where he says,

"The knowledge of man (hitherto) hath beene determined by the view, or sight; so that whatsoever is invisible, either in respect of the fineness of the body itselfe; or the smallness of the parts; or of the subtilty of the motion; is little inquired. And yet these be the things that govern nature principally; and without which you cannot make any true analysis and indication of the proceedings of nature. The spirits or pneumaticals, that are in all tangible bodies, are scarce known. Neither is this a question of words, but infinitely material in nature. For, from them, and their motions, principally proceed putrefaction, vivification, and most of the effects of nature."

Of the importance of a knowledge of the laws of this spirit as the cause of health, agreeable sensation, sanity of mind, and prolongation of life, Bacon was deeply impressed; and some of our contemporaries may possibly be supposed to have entertained sentiments not very different, when they say that our health of body and soundness of mind depend upon 66 a proper degree of excitability, properly excited." In the eleventh section of his Treatise on Life and Death there is a minute investigation of the nature of this spirit: it is entitled "Improvable Axioms, or variable_Caverns for giving Light into the Cause of the Continuance of Life, and the true Nature or Form of Death. In his Advancement of Learning, in his inquiries upon the prolongation of life," he says

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"Animals are consumed by the depredation of innate spirit and the depredation of ambient air. Now, when the action of these causes can be prevented, the body, like a fly in amber, more beautifully emtombed than an Egyptian monarch, defies decomposition. The prolongation of life, therefore, depends upon the art of counteracting this consumption, by making the agents less predatory, and the patients less depredable.”

He then, after in some sort apologizing for thus occupying the mind in meditations upon the body, by saying, “Although