firmabo. Ex qua consuetudine (supra omnia epithalamiorum vota) beatissimam prolem vere Heroum (qui infinitas humanas necessitates, omnibus gigantibus, monstris, et tyrannis exitiosiores, subacturi sunt, et rebus vestris placidam et festam securitatem et copiam conciliaturi) suscipies. Ego vero (fili) si te jamjam animo ab idolis non repurgato vertiginosis experientia ambagibus committerem, næ tu ducem cito desiderares. Idola autem exuere simplici præcepto meo sine rerum notitia, ne, si velles maxime, posses. In tabulis nisi priora deleveris, non alia inscripseris. In mente contra: nisi alia inscripseris, non priora deleveris. Atque ut hoc fieri posset ut idola hospitii exueres, tamen periculum omnino est ut ab idolis viæ non initiatus obruare. Nimis duci assuevisti. Etiam Romæ, firmata semel tyrannide, semper postea sacramentum in senatus populique Romani nomen irritum fuit. Confide (fili), et da te mihi, ut te tibi reddam. PREFACE TO THE PARTIS INSTAURATIONIS SECUNDE DELINEATIO ET ARGUMENTUM. AMONG the pieces collected by Gruter under the title Impetus Philosophici, the first is entitled Indicia vera de Interpretatione Naturæ. It consists of the preface to the Novum Organum (Qui de naturâ tanquam de re exploratâ &c.) which has already been printed Vol. I. p. 115.; the Partis secundæ delineatio et Argumentum; and a small portion of the Redargutio Philosophiarum; all three printed consecutively under the same general heading, as if they had been found together in the original manuscript and formed one composition. The last (which has no separate heading, but is printed as if it were a part of the Delineatio) breaks off abruptly. But a manuscript discovered by Robert Stephens among Lord Oxford's collections, and now in the British Museum', enables us to complete it, and supplies the title. That it is the same writing there can be no doubt; for the first three or four pages of the manuscript are identical, or nearly so, with the last three or four printed by Gruter, and the whole fits perfectly into its place. The Delineatio is a sketch of the plan of the Novum Organum, as then designed; and is interesting for three reasons. First, it contains the earliest intimation of the entire scheme of the Instauratio Magna; which Bacon had already resolved to distribute into six parts: the second to treat of the art of interpretation; the third, fourth, and sixth to exhibit the results of the art applied; and the fifth to be provisional, consisting of anticipations arrived at by the ordinary method, which were afterwards to be verified by the true method. All which agrees exactly with the design ultimately developed in the Distributio Operis. Of the first part he says nothing; perhaps because, 1 Harl. MSS. 6855. |