he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation; and was buried in St. Michael's church at St. Albans; being the place designed for his burial by his last will and testament, both because the body of his mother was interred there, and because it was the only church then remaining within the precincts of old Verulam: where he hath a monument erected for him in white marble (by the care and gratitude of Sir Thomas Meautys, knight, formerly his lordship's secretary, afterwards clerk of the King's Honourable Privy Council under two kings); representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying, with an inscription composed by that accomplished gentleman and rare wit, Sir Henry Wotton.1 But howsoever his body was mortal, yet no doubt his memory and works will live, and will in all probability last as long as the world lasteth. In order to which I have endeavoured (after my poor ability) to do this honour to his lordship, by way of conducing to the same. FINIS. FRANCISCUS BACON, BARO DE VERULAM, S'. ALBANI VICmes SEU NOTIORIBUS TITULIS SCIENTIARUM LUMEN FACUNDLE LEX SIC SEDEBAT. QUI POSTQUAM OMNIA NATURALIS SAPIENTIÆ NATURE DECRETUM EXPLEVIT COMPOSITA SOLVANTUR AN. DNI M.DC. XXVI. TANTI VIRI MEM. THOMAS MEAUTUS SUPERSTITIS CULTOR DEFUNCTI ADMIRATOR H. P. GENERAL PREFACE TO BACON'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. BY ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS. (1.) OUR knowledge of Bacon's method is much less complete than it is commonly supposed to be. Of the Novum Organum, which was to contain a complete statement of its nature and principles, we have only the first two books; and although in other parts of Bacon's writings, as for instance in the Cogitata et Visa de Interpretatione Naturæ, many of the ideas contained in these books recur in a less systematic form, we yet meet with but few indications of the nature of the subjects which were to have been discussed in the others. It seems not improbable that some parts of Bacon's system were never perfectly developed even in his own mind. However this may be, it is certain that an attempt to determine what his method, taken as a whole, was or would have been, must necessarily involve a conjectural or hypothetical element; and it is, I think, chiefly because this circumstance has not been sufficiently recognised, that the idea of Bacon's philosophy has generally speaking been but imperfectly apprehended. (2.) Of the subjects which were to have occupied the remainder of the Novum Organum we learn something from a passage at the end of the second book. "Nunc vero," it is said at the conclusion of the doctrine of prerogative instances, "ad adminicula et rectificationes inductionis, et deinceps ad concreta, et latentes processus, et latentes schematismos, et reliqua quæ aphorismo XXI ordine proposuimus, pergendum." On referring to the twenty-first aphorism we find a sort of table of contents of the whole work. "Dice mus itaque primo loco, de prærogativis instantiarum; secundo, de adminiculis inductionis; tertio, de rectificatione inductionis; quarto, de variatione inquisitionis pro naturâ subjecti; quinto, de prærogativis naturarum quatenus ad inquisitionem, sive de eo quod inquirendum est prius et posterius; sexto, de terminis inquisitionis, sive de synopsi omnium naturarum in universo; septimo, de deductione ad praxin, sive de eo quod est in ordine ad hominem; octavo, de parascevis ad inquisitionem; postremo autem, de scalâ ascensoriâ et descensoriâ axiomatum." Of these nine subjects the first is the only one with which we are at all accurately acquainted. (3.) Bacon's method was essentially inductive. He rejected the use of syllogistic or deductive reasoning, except when practical applications were to be made of the conclusions, axiomata, to which the inquirer had been led by a systematic process of induction. 66 Logica quæ nunc habetur inutilis est ad inventionem scientiaruin. . Spes est una in inductione verâ.”1 It is to be observed that wherever Bacon speaks of an "ascending" process, he is to be understood to mean induction, of which it is the character to proceed from that which is nobis notius to that which is notius simpliciter. Contrariwise when he speaks of a descent, he always refers to the correlative process of deduction. Thus when in the Partis secundæ Delineatio he says, "meminerint homines in inquisitione activâ necesse esse rem per scalam descensoriam (cujus usum in contemplativâ sustulimus) confici: omnis enim operatio in individuis versatur quæ infimo loco sunt,”—we are to understand that in Bacon's system deduction is only admissible in the inquisitio activa; that is, in practical applications of the results of induction. Similarly in the Distributio Operis he says, "Rejicimus syllogismum; neque id solùm quoad principia (ad quæ nec illi eam adhibent) sed etiam quoad propositiones medias." Everything was to be established by induction. "In constituendo autem axiomate forma inductionis alia quàm adhuc in usu fuit excogitanda est, eaque non ad principia tantùm (quæ vocant) probanda et invenienda, sed etiam ad axiomata minora, et media, denique omnia."2 (4.) It is necessary to determine the relation in which Bacon conceived his method to stand to ordinary induction. Both methods set out "a sensu et particularibus," and acquiesce "in Nov. Org. i. 11. and 14. 2 Nov. Org. i. 105. |