Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: his letters, he seems to admit, that provided the Experimental were the true Method, there was nothing that could be added to increase the utility of Bacon's precepts. Having made these remarks with a view to point out, in a general way, the nature and importance of those aids and encouragements which Bacon's writings furnished to physical inquiry, I shall now endeavour to show, that the subsequent progress of physical knowledge was greatly accelerated by the effects which they produced. And here I beg to observe, that I have no argument with those who hold that the reformation of philosophy would have taken place, though Bacon had never written; any more than with those who argue, that physical science owes nothing to him, on the ground of any discovery of importance made by himself, or deduced by others from his suggestions. I have before stated that this reformation was in progress, and that the inductive method had been exemplified in the discoveries of some of his contemporaries. But I contend, that Bacon did more to forward its general adoption than any other person; because his Lettres de M. Descartes, iv. 201, Paris edit. 1724. writings led to the abandonment of the scholastic methods and systems, generated a relish for experimental inquiries, and imbued the minds of the ingenious with the views and principles requisite to conduct these inquiries with success. The great reputation which Bacon had acquired from his Essays, a work early translated into various foreign languages; his splendid talents as an orator, and his prominent position in public life, were circumstances strongly calculated to attract the curiosity of the learned world to his philosophical writings. They accordingly appear to have been early read by the learned at home, and early transmitted ...