Note 3 — APHORISMS—BOOK I ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE AND THE EMPIRE OF MAN

By this term axiomata, Bacon here speaks of general principles, or universal laws. In the 19th aphorism he employs the term to express any proposition collected from facts by induction, and thus fitted to become the starting-point of deductive reasoning. In the last and more rigorous sense of the term, Bacon held they arose from experience. See Whewell’s “Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,” vol. i. p. 74; and Mill’s “Logic,” vol. i. p. 311; and the June “Quarterly,” 1841, for the modern phase of the discussion.—Ed.