Note 213 — Chapter XX · (continued 2)

“The effects which Bacon’s writings have hitherto produced, have indeed been far more conspicuous in physics than in the science of mind. Even here, however, they have been great and most important, as well as in some collateral branches of knowledge, such as natural jurisprudence, political economy, criticism and morals, which spring up from the same root, or rather which are branches of that tree of which the science of mind is the trunk.” Stewart’s Philosophical Essays, Prelim. Dissertation. The principal advantage, perhaps, of those habits of reasoning which the Baconian methods, whether learned directly or through the many disciples of that school, have a tendency to generate, is that they render men cautious and painstaking in the pursuit of truth, and therefore restrain them from deciding too soon. Nemo reperitur qui in rebus ipsis et experientia moram fecerit legitimam. These words are more frequently true of moral and political reasoners than of any others. Men apply historical or personal experience, but they apply it hastily, and without giving themselves time for either a copious or an exact induction; the great majority being too much influenced by passion, party-spirit, or vanity, or perhaps by affections morally right, but not the less dangerous in reasoning, to maintain the patient and dispassionate suspense of judgment (ακαταληψια), which ought to be the condition of our enquiries.