[2] The argumentation against Bacon's philosophy is based on Maistre's epistemology first enunciated in the St Petersburg Dialogues (1819), according to which science depends on the innate ideas that are common to all human minds.
[3] Maistre also argues that genius plays a pivotal role in great scientific discoveries, as demonstrated by inspired intellects such as Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, contrary to Bacon's theory about conforming to a mechanistic method.
Augustin Bonnetty remarked that "it would perhaps be necessary to go back to Pascal's Lettres provinciales to find a more severe, more mocking, more pointed critique.
"[5] Gustave Flaubert quoted a few sentences from the work in his novel Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881)—a critique of bourgeoisie society: “Bacon est absolument dépourvu de l’esprit d’analyse ; non seulement ne savait pas résoudre les questions, mais ne savait pas même les poser.
// Bacon, a man foreign to all sciences and whose fundamental ideas were false to the point of ridiculousness!”Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, one of the most distinguished literary critics in nineteenth-century France, thought that Maistre's chapters on final causes and on the union of religion and science contained "certainly some of the finest pages that have ever been written in a human language.