For his own personal fortunes, the most important event of the session was his promotion at last to the Solicitorship; which took place silently on the 25th of June. Croke, who was King's serjeant, was made a Puisne Judge of the King's Bench. Doderidge became King's Serjeant in his place; and Bacon succeeded as Solicitor, an office which he reckoned to be worth £1000 a year.1 1 Commentarius Solutus, vol. iv. p. 86. It was probably about this time that Bacon finally settled the plan of his "Great Instauration," and began to call it by that name. In 1605, he had (as I have already mentioned) digested the subject in his head into two parts: 1st, the art of experimenting, that is of following an investigation with intelligence from one experiment to another which is in fact the art that Science has been practising ever since, and by means of which she has achieved all her successes; and 2dly, the art of what he called "Interpretation of Nature," which was to furnish the key of the cipher, and in revealing the secret of all natural operations to give command of all natural forces. This last, as he came to look into it more closely, he proposed to distribute into three books: the first to prepare the way for the reception of the new method by removing the impediments which he anticipated in the state of opinion and the errors of the mind; the second, to expound the method itself; the third, to exhibit the results of the method applied.1 Further consideration (with reference however not merely to the exposition of the argument, but also to the better preservation of his own various philosophical writings) led him to enlarge the plan still further. A review of the existing stock of human knowledge,of which the Advancement of Learning was a sketch, and the Descriptio Globi Intellectualis was meant, I think, for the beginning,was to form the first part. The second was to include a complete exposition of the new method or organum; together with all the preliminary matter designed to prepare the way for it. The third 1 Temporis Partus Masculus: sive de Interpretatione Naturæ, libri 3. 1. Perpolitio et applicatio mentis. 2. Lumen Naturæ, seu formula Interpretationis. 3. Natura illuminata, sive Veritas Rerum. 2 See Philosoph. Works, Vol. III. p. 713. was appropriated to the collection of natural and experimental history,-Phenomena Universi,-the observed and ascertained facts of nature, upon which the new method was to work. A fourth was to exhibit examples of the application of the new method in certain selected subjects,-examples of a true induction carried through all its processes, from the observation of the facts to the discovery of the "form." A fifth was to contain certain provisional speculations, suggested by the way, on subjects to which, for want of completer knowledge, the true method could not yet be applied. The sixth and last was to set forth the new philosophy itself,-the book of Nature laid open and explained,-Natura illuminata, sive Veritas Rerum. How much of this he expected to execute or see executed, it would be vain to conjecture. But though the accomplishment of the last part seemed to him, even in his most sanguine moods, remote beyond all definite anticipation, a thing reserved for "the fortune of the human race" to achieve in some future century,'-there is no doubt that (given workmen enough and time enough) he believed the whole to be practicable by human means, and himself to be capable of making a beginning which would lead in due course to the accomplishment of the whole. The difficulty was to find the workmen ; the first step towards which was to find hearers and believers. And upon this point the taste he had taken of men's opinions during the last year or two appears to have given him some new light. It had shown him that besides the "fallacies or false appearances enumerated in the Advancement of Learning-illusions inseparable from our mental condition, and afterwards distinguished as Idols of the Tribe, the Cave, and the Market-place-there was another class of idols to be dealt with, which, though not inherent in the constitution of the mind itself, nor inseparable from the condition of man's life, were nevertheless extant and potent in fact, and stood more obstinately in the way. These were the received systems, in the belief of which men had been brought up; the doctrines taught in the schools; the orthodoxies, in short, of philosophy. To clear the way for the reception of his own views, it was requisite in the first place to shake men's faith in these: and it was at this time that the "pars destruens" was designated for the foremost place in the great argument, and the redargutio philosophiarum (afterwards called the caution against the Idols of the Theatre) for the foremost place in the "Hanc vero postremam partem perficere et ad exitum perducere, res est et supra vires et ultra spes nostras collocata. Nos ei initia (ut speramus) non contemnenda, exitum generis humani fortuna dabit, qualem forte homines in hoc rerum et animorum statu haud facile animo capere aut metiri queant." Works, I. p. 144. pars destruens. Of this he made two or three different sketches, in different forms and styles; experiments, I think, as to the most effective manner of treating the subject; the dates and even the order of which we have no means of ascertaining with precision. But there is one which I am inclined to regard as representing at once the earliest and the latest form in which this part of the argument was set forth; the form in which, as being most natural to him, he probably began, and in which for the same reason, after making trial of the others, he certainly rested: although the copy in which it has been preserved may be very different from the first draft, which would naturally be altered and enlarged in successive revisions. This however is only a guess. What we know is, that some time before February, 1607-8, he had shown to Sir Thomas Bodley a treatise entitled Cogitata et Visa; containing (according to Sir Thomas)" many rare and noble speculations," and "abounding with choice conceits of the present state of learning and worthy contemplations of the means to procure it;" the general purport of which was to "condemn our present knowledge of doubts and incertitudes," to recommend the "disclaiming of all our axioms and maxims, and general assertions, that are left by tradition from our elders unto us;" "and lastly to devise, being now become again as it were abecedarii, by the frequent spelling of particulars to come to the notice of the true generals, and so afresh to create new principles of sciences," and "a knowledge more excellent than now is among us"-(I quote Bodley's own expressions, though not the aptest that might be devised:)-and that among the pieces published by Gruter in 1653, there is one entitled Cogitata et Visa de Interpretatione Naturæ, sive de Inventione Rerum et Operum, consisting of a series of meditations upon the various causes which had hindered man in acquiring the command of nature; among which the incompetency of the received systems of philosophy and the received methods of demonstration and enquiry, hold a prominent place :-a treatise to which all Bodley's remarks apply well enough, as far as they go. The letter which contains them, and which was printed in the 'Remains' (1648), is dated February 19, 1607; that is 1607-8; and helps to date the following letter from Bacon to Bodley; which being evidently written before he had heard from him, and at the beginning of a vacation, must be referred either to July or December, 1607. It does not much matter which, for the inference on either supposition must be that the Cogitata et Visa represents sub "Itaque primus imponitur labor, ut omnis ista militia theoriarum, quæ tantas dedit pugnas, mittatur ac relegetur."-Philos. Works, III. p. 548. : stantially the state of his philosophical enterprise in the summer of that year, and the part of the task upon which he was then at work. I say substantially because the allusion to "the lodgings chalked up, whereof I speak in my preface," implies either that the treatise was not then exactly in the shape in which it has been preserved,— for it has no preface nor is there anything in it about the chalked lodgings, or that it had been accompanied with other papers on the same subject: which indeed seems very probable: and that one of them was the Partis Instaurationis Secundæ Delineatio et Argumentum, in which (as printed by Gruter) such a passage does occur.1 A LETTER TO SIR THO: BODLEY, AFTER HE HAD IMPARTED In respect of my going down to my house in the country, I shall have miss of my papers; which I pray you therefore to return unto me. You are, I bear you witness, slothful, and you help me nothing; so as I am half in conceit that you affect not the argument; for myself I know well you love and affect. I can say no more to you, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvæ. If you be not of the lodgings chalked up (whereof I speak in my preface) I am but to pass by your door. But if I had you but a fortnight at Gorhambury, I would make you tell me another tale; or else I would add a Cogitation against Libraries, and be revenged on you that way. I pray send me some good news of Sir Thomas Smith, and commend me very kindly to him. So I rest. Bodley might help Bacon with supply of books; but, for ideas, it must have been manifest from the moment his answer came that no light could be looked for from that quarter; not even the light which is given by intelligent opposition. Nothing can be weaker or more confused than his reasons for dissent, unless it be his apprehension of the question at issue. 1"Atque quod Borgia facete de Caroli octavi expeditione in Galliam dixit, Gallos venisse in manibus cretam tenentes qua diversoria notarent, non arma quibus perrumperent, similem quoque inventorum nostrorum et rationem et successum nobis præcipimus, nimirum ut potius animos hominum capaces et idoneos seponere et subire possint quam contra sentientibus molesta sint."-Works, III. p. 558. 2 Add. MSS. 5503, f. 32 b. |