Edward Conybeare - "Early Britain Roman Britain"

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Book Review: The Dream Gurbaksh Chahal
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Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books written by Charles W. Eliot

C >> Charles W. Eliot >> Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books




* * * * *

Having thus coasted past the ancient arts, the next point is to equip
the intellect for passing beyond. To the second part therefore belongs
the doctrine concerning the better and more perfect use of human
reason in the inquisition of things, and the true helps of the
understanding: that thereby (as far as the condition of mortality and
humanity allows) the intellect may be raised and exalted, and made
capable of overcoming the difficulties and obscurities of nature. The
art which I introduce with this view (which I call _Interpretation of
Nature_) is a kind of logic; though the difference between it and
the ordinary logic is great; indeed immense. For the ordinary
logic professes to contrive and prepare helps and guards for the
understanding, as mine does; and in this one point they agree. But
mine differs from it in three points especially; viz. in the end aimed
at; in the order of demonstration; and in the starting point of the
inquiry.

For the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not
of arguments but of arts; not of things in accordance with principles,
but of principles themselves; not of probable reasons, but of
designations and directions for works. And as the intention is
different, so accordingly is the effect; the effect of the one being
to overcome an opponent in argument, of the other to command nature in
action.

In accordance with this end is also the nature and order of the
demonstrations. For in the ordinary logic almost all the work is spent
about the syllogism. Of induction the logicians seem hardly to have
taken any serious thought, but they pass it by with a slight notice,
and hasten on to the formulae of disputation. I on the contrary reject
demonstration by syllogism, as acting too confusedly, and letting
nature slip out of its hands. For although no one can doubt that
things which agree in a middle term agree with one another (which is
a proposition of mathematical certainty), yet it leaves an opening
for deception; which is this. The syllogism consists of propositions;
propositions of words; and words are the tokens and signs of notions.
Now if the very notions of the mind (which are as the soul of words
and the basis of the whole structure) be improperly and over-hastily
abstracted from facts, vague not sufficiently definite, faulty in
short in many ways, the whole edifice tumbles. I therefore reject the
syllogism; and that not only as regards principles (for to principles
the logicians themselves do not apply it) but also as regards middle
propositions; which, though obtainable no doubt by the syllogism,
are, when so obtained, barren of works, remote from practice, and
altogether unavailable for the active department of the sciences.
Although therefore I leave to the syllogism and these famous and
boasted modes of demonstration their jurisdiction over popular arts
and such as are matter of opinion (in which department I leave all
as it is), yet in dealing with the nature of things I use induction
throughout, and that in the minor propositions as well as the major.
For I consider induction to be that form of demonstration which
upholds the sense, and closes with nature, and comes to the very brink
of operation, if it does not actually deal with it.

Hence it follows that the order of demonstration is likewise inverted.
For hitherto the proceeding has been to fly at once from the sense
and particulars up to the most general propositions, as certain fixed
poles for the argument to turn upon, and from these to derive the rest
by middle terms a short way, no doubt, but precipitate, and one which
will never lead to nature, though it offers an easy and ready way to
disputation. Now my plan is to proceed regularly and gradually from
one axiom to another, so that the most general are not reached till
the last but then when you do come to them you find them to be not
empty notions, but well defined, and such as nature would really
recognise as her first principles, and such as lie at the heart and
marrow of things.

But the greatest change I introduce is in the form itself of induction
and the judgment made thereby. For the induction of which the
logicians speak, which proceeds by simple enumeration, is a puerile
thing, concludes at hazard, is always liable to be upset by a
contradictory instance, takes into account only what is known and
ordinary, and leads to no result.

Now what the sciences stand in need of is a form of induction which
shall analyse experience and take it to pieces, and by a due process
of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion. And
if that ordinary mode of judgment practised by the logicians was so
laborious, and found exercise for such great wits how much more labour
must we be prepared to bestow upon this other, which is extracted not
merely out of the depths of the mind, but out of the very bowels of
nature.

Nor is this all. For I also sink the foundations of the sciences
deeper and firmer; and I begin the inquiry nearer the source than men
have done heretofore; submitting to examination those things which
the common logic takes on trust. For first, the logicians borrow the
principles of each science from the science itself; secondly, they
hold in reverence the first notions of the mind; and lastly, they
receive as conclusive the immediate informations of the sense, when
well disposed. Now upon the first point, I hold that true logic
ought to enter the several provinces of science armed with a higher
authority than belongs to the principles of those sciences themselves,
and ought to call those putative principles to account until they
are fully established. Then with regard to the first notions of the
intellect; there is not one of the impressions taken by the intellect
when left to go its own way, but I hold it for suspected, and no
way established, until it has submitted to a new trial and a fresh
judgment has been thereupon pronounced. And lastly, the information
of the sense itself I sift and examine in many ways. For certain it
is that the senses deceive; but then at the same time they supply the
means of discovering their own errors; only the errors are here, the
means of discovery are to seek.

The sense fails in two ways. Sometimes it gives no information,
sometimes it gives false information. For first, there are very many
things which escape the sense, even when best disposed and no way
obstructed; by reason either of the subtlety of the whole body, or
the minuteness of the parts, or distance of place, or slowness or else
swiftness of motion, or familiarity of the object, or other causes.
And again when the sense does apprehend a thing its apprehension is
not much to be relied upon. For the testimony and information of the
sense has reference always to man, not to the universe; and it is a
great error to assert that the sense is the measure of things.

To meet these difficulties, I have sought on all sides diligently and
faithfully to provide helps for the sense--substitutes to supply its
failures, rectifications to correct its errors; and this I endeavour
to accomplish not so much by instruments as by experiments. For the
subtlety of experiments is far greater than that of the sense itself,
even when assisted by exquisite instruments; such experiments, I mean,
as are skilfully and artificially devised for the express purpose
of determining the point in question. To the immediate and proper
perception of the sense therefore I do not give much weight; but I
contrive that the office of the sense shall be only to judge of the
experiment, and that the experiment itself shall judge of the thing.
And thus I conceive that I perform the office of a true priest of the
sense (from which all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless men
mean to go mad) and a not unskilful interpreter of its oracles; and
that while others only profess to uphold and cultivate the sense, I
do so in fact. Such then are the provisions I make for finding the
genuine light of nature and kindling and bringing it to bear. And they
would be sufficient of themselves, if the human intellect were even,
and like a fair sheet of paper with no writing on it. But since the
minds of men are strangely possessed and beset, so that there is no
true and even surface left to reflect the genuine rays of things, it
is necessary to seek a remedy for this also.

Now the idols, or phantoms, by which the mind is occupied are either
adventitious or innate. The adventitious come into the mind from
without; namely, either from the doctrines and sects of philosophers,
or from perverse rules of demonstration. But the innate are inherent
in the very nature of the intellect, which is far more prone to error
than the sense is. For let men please themselves as they will in
admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain: that as
an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own
figure and section, so the mind, when it receives impressions of
objects through the sense, cannot be trusted to report them truly,
but in forming its notions mixes up its own nature with the nature of
things.

And as the first two kinds of idols are hard to eradicate, so idols of
this last kind cannot be eradicated at all. All that can be done is
to point them out, so that this insidious action of the mind may be
marked and reproved (else as fast as old errors are destroyed new ones
will spring up out of the ill complexion of the mind itself, and so we
shall have but a change or errors, and not a clearance); and to lay it
down once for all as a fixed and established maxim, that the intellect
is not qualified to judge except by means of induction, and induction
in its legitimate form. This doctrine then of the expurgation of the
intellect to qualify it for dealing with truth, is comprised in three
refutations: the refutation of the Philosophies; the refutation of the
Demonstrations; and the refutation of the Natural Human Reason. The
explanation of which things, and of the true relation between the
nature of things and the nature of the mind, is as the strewing and
decoration of the bridal chamber of the Mind and the Universe, the
Divine Goodness assisting; out of which marriage let us hope (and be
this the prayer of the bridal song) there may spring helps to man,
and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and
overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity. This is the second
part of the work.

* * * * *

But I design not only to indicate and mark out the ways, but also
to enter them. And therefore the third part of the work embraces the
Phenomena of the Universe; that is to say, experience of every kind,
and such a natural history as may serve for a foundation to build
philosophy upon. For a good method of demonstration or form of
interpreting nature may keep the mind from going astray or stumbling,
but it is not any excellence of method that can supply it with the
material of knowledge. Those however who aspire not to guess and
divine, but to discover and know; who propose not to devise mimic and
fabulous worlds of their own, but to examine and dissect the nature
of this very world itself; must go to facts themselves for
everything. Nor can the place of this labour and search and
worldwide perambulation be supplied by any genius or meditation or
argumentation; no, not if all men's wits could meet in one. This
therefore we must have, or the business must be for ever abandoned.
But up to this day such has been the condition of men in this matter,
that it is no wonder if nature will not give herself into their hands.

For first, the information of the sense itself, sometimes failing,
sometimes false; observation, careless, irregular, and led by chance;
tradition, vain and fed on rumour; practice, slavishly bent upon its
work; experiment, blind, stupid, vague, and prematurely broken off;
lastly, natural history, trivial and poor;--all these have contributed
to supply the understanding with very bad materials for philosophy and
the sciences.

Then an attempt is made to mend the matter by a preposterous subtlety
and winnowing of argument. But this comes too late, the case being
already past remedy; and is far from setting the business right
or sifting away the errors. The only hope therefore of any greater
increase or progress lies in a reconstruction of the sciences.

Of this reconstruction the foundation must be laid in natural history,
and that of a new kind and gathered on a new principle. For it is
in vain that you polish the mirror if there are no images to be
reflected; and it is as necessary that the intellect should be
supplied with fit matter to work upon, as with safeguards to guide its
working. But my history differs from that in use (as my logic does) in
many things,--in end and office, in mass and composition, in subtlety,
in selection also and setting forth, with a view to the operations
which are to follow.

For first, the object of a natural history which I propose is not so
much to delight with variety of matter or to help with present use of
experiments, as to give light to the discovery of causes and supply a
suckling philosophy with its first food. For though it be true that
I am principally in pursuit of works and the active department of the
sciences, yet I wait for harvest-time, and do not attempt to mow
the moss or to reap the green corn. For I well know that axioms once
rightly discovered will carry whole troops of works along with them,
and produce them, not here and there one, but in clusters. And that
unseasonable and puerile hurry to snatch by way of earnest at the
first works which come within reach, I utterly condemn and reject, as
an Atalanta's apple that hinders the race. Such then is the office of
this natural history of mine.

Next, with regard to the mass and composition of it: I mean it to be a
history not only of nature free and at large (when she is left to
her own course and does her work her own way)--such as that of
the heavenly bodies, meteors, earth and sea, minerals, plants,
animals,--but much more of nature under constraint and vexed; that
is to say, when by art and the hand of man she is forced out of her
natural state, and squeezed and moulded. Therefore I set down at
length all experiments of the mechanical arts, of the operative part
of the liberal arts, of the many crafts which have not yet grown into
arts properly so called, so far as I have been able to examine them
and as they conduce to the end in view. Nay (to say the plain truth)
I do in fact (low and vulgar as men may think it) count more upon this
part both for helps and safeguards than upon the other; seeing that
the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations
of art than in its natural freedom.

Nor do I confine the history to Bodies; but I have thought it my
duty besides to make a separate history of such Virtues as may be
considered cardinal in nature. I mean those original passions or
desires of matter which constitute the primary elements of nature;
such as Dense and Rare, Hot and Cold, Solid and Fluid, Heavy and
Light, and several others.

Then again, to speak of subtlety: I seek out and get together a
kind of experiments much subtler and simpler than those which occur
accidentally. For I drag into light many things which no one who was
not proceeding by a regular and certain way to the discovery of causes
would have thought of inquiring after; being indeed in themselves of
no great use; which shows that they were not sought for on their own
account; but having just the same relation to things and works which
the letters of the alphabet have to speech and words--which, though
in themselves useless, are the elements of which all discourse is made
up.

Further, in the selection of the relation and experiments I conceive I
have been a more cautious purveyor than those who have hitherto dealt
with natural history. For I admit nothing but on the faith of eyes,
or at least of careful and severe examination; so that nothing is
exaggerated for wonder's sake, but what I state is sound and without
mixture of fables or vanity. All received or current falsehoods
also (which by strange negligence have been allowed for many ages to
prevail and become established) I proscribe and brand by name; that
the sciences may be no more troubled with them For it has been well
observed that the fables and superstitions and follies which nurses
instil into children do serious injury to their minds; and the same
consideration makes me anxious, having the management of the childhood
as it were of philosophy in its course of natural history, not to let
it accustom itself in the beginning to any vanity. Moreover, whenever
I come to a new experiment of any subtlety (though it be in my own
opinion certain and approved), I nevertheless subjoin a clear account
of the manner in which I made it; that men knowing exactly how each
point was made out, may see whether there be any error connected with
it, and may arouse themselves to devise proofs more trustworthy and
exquisite, if such can be found; and finally, I interpose everywhere
admonitions and scruples and cautions, with a religious care to eject,
repress, and as it were exorcise every kind of phantasm.

Lastly, knowing how much the sight of man's mind is distracted by
experience and history, and how hard it is at the first (especially
for minds either tender or preoccupied) to become familiar with
nature, I not unfrequently subjoin observations of my own, being as
the first offers, inclinations, and as it were glances of history
towards philosophy; both by way of an assurance to men that they will
be kept for ever tossing on the waves of experience, and also that
when the time comes for the intellect to begin its work, it may find
everything the more ready. By such a natural history then as I have
described, I conceive that a safe and convenient approach may be made
to nature, and matter supplied of good quality and well prepared for
the understanding to work upon.

* * * * *

And now that we have surrounded the intellect with faithful helps and
guards, and got together with most careful selection a regular army of
divine works, it may seem that we have no more to do but to proceed to
philosophy itself. And yet in a matter so difficult and doubtful there
are still some things which it seems necessary to premise, partly for
convenience of explanation, partly for present use.

Of these the first is to set forth examples of inquiry and invention
according to my method, exhibited by anticipation in some particular
subjects; choosing such subjects as are at once the most noble in
themselves among those under inquiry, and most different one from
another; that there may be an example in every kind. I do not speak of
those examples which are joined to the several precepts and rules by
way of illustration (for of these I have given plenty in the second
part of the work); but I mean actual types and models, by which the
entire process of the mind and the whole fabric and order of invention
from the beginning to the end, in certain subjects, and those various
and remarkable, should be set as it were before the eyes. For
I remember that in the mathematics it is easy to follow the
demonstration when you have a machine beside you; whereas without
that help all appears involved and more subtle than it really is. To
examples of this kind,--being in fact nothing more than an application
of the second part in detail and at large,--the fourth part of the
work is devoted.

* * * * *

The fifth part is for temporary use only, pending the completion of
the rest; like interest payable from time to time until the principal
be forthcoming. For I do not make so blindly for the end of my
journey, as to neglect anything useful that may turn up by the way.
And therefore I include in this fifth part such things as I have
myself discovered, proved, or added,--not however according to the
true rules and methods of interpretation, but by the ordinary use of
the understanding in inquiring and discovering. For besides that I
hope my speculations may in virtue of my continual conversancy with
nature have a value beyond the pretensions of my wit, they will
serve in the meantime for wayside inns in which the mind may rest
and refresh itself on its journey to more certain conclusions.
Nevertheless I wish it to be understood in the meantime that they are
conclusions by which (as not being discovered and proved by the true
form of interpretation) I do not at all mean to bind myself. Nor
need any one be alarmed at such suspension of judgment, in one who
maintains not simply that nothing can be known, but only that nothing
can be known except in a certain course and way; and yet establishes
provisionally certain degrees of assurance, for use and relief until
the mind shall arrive at a knowledge of causes in which it can
rest. For even those schools of philosophy which held the absolute
impossibility of knowing anything were not inferior to those which
took upon them to pronounce. But then they did not provide helps for
the sense and understanding, as I have done, but simply took away all
their authority: which is quite a different thing--almost the reverse.

* * * * *

The sixth part of my work (to which the rest is subservient and
ministrant) discloses and sets forth that philosophy which by
the legitimate, chaste, and severe course of inquiry which I have
explained and provided is at length developed and established. The
completion however of this last part is a thing both above my strength
and beyond my hopes. I have made a beginning of the work--a beginning,
as I hope, not unimportant:--the fortune of the human race will give
the issue;--such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of
things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined. For
the matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real
business and fortunes of the human race, and all power of operation.
For man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and
what he knows is only what he has observed of nature's order in fact
or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For
the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can
nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects,
human Knowledge and human Power, do really meet in one; and it is from
ignorance of causes that operation fails.

And all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts
of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. For God
forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a
pattern of the world; rather may he graciously grant to us to write an
apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on
his creatures.

Therefore do thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the
first fruits of creation, and didst breathe into the face of man the
intellectual light as the crown and consummation thereof, guard and
protect this work, which coming from thy goodness returneth to thy
glory. Thou when thou turnedst to look upon the works which thy hands
had made, sawest that all was very good, and didst rest from thy
labours. But man, when he turned to look upon the work which his hands
had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could
find no rest therein. Wherefore if we labour in thy works with the
sweat of our brows thou wilt make us partakers of thy vision and thy
sabbath. Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and
that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom thou
shalt give the same spirit, thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human
family with new mercies.




PREFACE

TO THE NOVUM ORGANUM


Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a
thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken
in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done
philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been
successful in inducing belief, so they have been effective in
quenching and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling
and putting an end to other men's efforts than good by their own.
Those on the other hand who have taken a contrary course, and asserted
that absolutely nothing can be known,--whether it were from hatred of
the ancient sophists, or from uncertainty and fluctuation of mind,
or even from a kind of fulness of learning, that they fell upon this
opinion,--have certainly advanced reasons for it that are not to be
despised; but yet they have neither started from true principles nor
rested in the just conclusion, zeal and affectation having carried
them much too far. The more ancient of the Greeks (whose writings
are lost) took up with better judgment a position between these two
extremes,--between the presumption of pronouncing on everything,
and the despair of comprehending anything; and though frequently and
bitterly complaining of the difficulty of inquiry and the obscurity of
things, and like impatient horses champing the bit, they did not
the less follow up their object and engage with Nature; thinking (it
seems) that this very question,--viz. whether or no anything can be
known,--was to be settled not by arguing, but by trying. And yet they
too, trusting entirely to the force of their understanding, applied
no rule, but made everything turn upon hard thinking and perpetual
working and exercise of the mind.