Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/31

 employed by Harvey should have undergone this strict investigation, seeing it was brought into use at the very epoch of Bacon. Bacon's work seems to have been to assist his fellow-creatures in throwing off the yoke which they had borne for so many centuries. His daring to put aside Plato and Aristotle, and to direct others to investigate and think for themselves constituted him a man of power; but whether he put them in the best way of discovery is another question which has long been discussed. Those who have chosen to call Bacon's inductive method equivalent to a collocation of facts, arc pleased to quote Harvey's discovery as an illustration of what a very opposite method will effect, but their reasonings and their facts are altogether erroneous. In various parts of Bacon's writings there are a sufficient number of scientific allusions to prove that the author knew the difference between a theory and a mere collocation of facts; and as regards Harvey, his method was of the purest inductive kind. I cannot but think that those philosophers who have discussed the different methods of induction and deduction, and which of them leads to the most fruitful results, have themselves been deficient in true scientific instinct;