He had a radically false and mechanical conception, though in words he earnestly disclaims it, of the way to deal with the facts of nature.

He looked on them as things which told their own story, and suggested the questions which ought to be put to them; and with this idea half his time was spent in collecting huge masses of indigested facts of the most various authenticity and value, and he thought he was collecting materials which his method had only to touch in order to bring forth from them light and truth and power.

He thought that, not in certain sciences, but in all, one set of men could do the observing and collecting, and another be set on the work of Induction and the discovery of "axioms." Doubtless in the arrangement and sorting of them his versatile and ingenious mind gave itself full play; he divides and distinguishes them into their companies and groups, different kinds of Motion, "Prerogative" instances, with their long tale of imaginative titles.

But we look in vain for any use that he was able to make of them, or even to suggest.

Bacon never adequately realised that no promiscuous assemblage of even the most certain facts could ever lead to knowledge, could ever suggest their own interpretation, without the action on them of the living mind, without the initiative of an idea.