Note 126 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

Novum Organum, ii, 46 and 48, § 17; De Aug. iii, 4; Thema Coeli. Ed. cited, pp. 364, 375, 461, 705, 709. Whewell (Hist. of Induct. Sciences, 3rd ed. i, 296, 298) ignores the second and third of these passages in denying Hume’s assertion that Bacon rejected the Copernican theory with “disdain.” It is true, however, that Bacon had vacillated. The facts are fairly faced by Prof. Fowler in his Bacon, 1881, pp. 151–52, and his ed. of Novum Organum, Introd. pp. 30–36. See also the summing-up of Ellis in notes to passages above cited, and at p. 675. ↑