THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS.
'If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.'
Advancement of Learning.
'We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part; for it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'
Novum Organum.
As to the method of this new kind of philosophical inquiry, which is brought to bear here so stedfastly upon the most delicate questions, at a time when the Play-house was expressly forbidden by a Royal Ordinance, on pain of dissolution, to touch them—in an age, too, when Parliaments were lectured, and brow-beaten, and rudely sent home, for contumaciously persisting in meddling with questions of state—in an age in which prelates were shrilly interrupted in the pulpit, in the midst of their finest and gravest Sunday discourse, and told, in the presence of their congregations, to hold their tongues and mind their own business, if they chanced to touch upon 'questions of church,' on a day when the Head of the Church herself, in her own sacred person, in her largest ruff, and 'rustling' in her last silk, happened to be in her pew;—as to the method of the philosophical investigations which were conducted under such critical conditions, of course there was no harm in displaying that in the abstract, as a method merely. As a method of philosophical inquiry, there was no harm in presenting it in a tolerably lucid and brilliant manner, accompanying the exhibition with careful, and apparently specific, directions as to the application of it to indifferent subjects. There was no harm, indeed, in blazoning this method a little, and in soliciting the attention of the public, and the attention of mankind in general, to it in a somewhat extraordinary manner, not without some considerable blowing of trumpets. As a method of philosophical inquiry, merely, what earthly harm could it do? Surely there was no more innocent thing in nature than 'your philosophy,' then, so far as any overt acts were concerned; it certainly was the last thing in the world that a king or a queen need trouble their heads about then. Who cared what methods the philosophers were taking, or whether this was a new one or an old one, so that the men of letters could understand it? The modern Solomon was fain to confess that, for his part, he could not—that it was beyond his depth; whereas the history of Henry the Seventh, by the same author, appeared to him extremely clear and lively, and quite within his range, and to that he gave his own personal approbation. The other work, however, as it was making so much noise in the world, and promising to go down to posterity, would serve to adorn his reign, and make it illustrious in future ages.
There was no harm in this philosopher's setting forth his method then, and giving very minute and strict directions in regard to its applications to 'certain subjects.' As to what the Author of it did with it himself—that, of course, was another thing, and nobody's business but his own just then, as it happened.
So totally was the world off its guard at the moment of this great and greatest innovation in its practice—so totally unaccustomed were men then to look for anything like power in the quarter from which this seemed to be proceeding—so impossible was it for this single book to remove that previous impression—that the Author of the Novum Organum could even venture to intersperse these directions, with regard to its specific and particular applications, with pointed and not infrequent allusions to the comprehensive nature—the essentially comprehensive nature—of 'the Machine' whose application to these certain instances he is at such pains to specify; he could, indeed, produce it with a continuous side-long glance at this so portentous quality of it.
Nay, he could go farther than that, and venture to assert openly, over his own name, and leave on record for the benefit of posterity, the assertion that this new method of inquiry does apply, directly and primarily, to those questions in which the human race are primarily concerned; that it strikes at once to the heart of those questions, and was invented to that end.
Such a certificate and warranty of the New Machine was put up by the hands of the Inventor on the face of it, when he dedicated it to the human use—when he appealed in its behalf from the criticism of the times that were near, to those that were far off. Nay, he takes pains to tell us; he tells us in that same moment, what one who studies the NOVUM ORGANUM with the key of 'Times' does not need to be told—can see for himself—that in his description of the method he has already contrived to make the application, the universal practical application.