THE WORKS OF FRANCIS BACON, BARON OF VERULAM, VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS, AND LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND. Collected and Edited BY JAMES SPEDDING, M. A. OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS, M. A. LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; AND DOUGLAS DENON HEATH, BARRISTER-AT-LAW; LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. PREFACE. AMONG the eight subjects which were to have been handled in the remaining books of the Novum Organum (see ii. 21.), the last but one is entitled De parascevis ad inquisitionem, under which head Bacon intended (as appears by the introduction to the following treatise) to set forth the character of the Natural and Experimental History, which was to form the third part of the Instauratio. What may have been the logical connexion between these eight subjects which determined him to reserve this for the penultimate place, it seems impossible, by the help of the titles alone, to divine. But whatever the order in which he thought advisable to approach it, there can be no doubt that this Natural and Experimental History was always regarded by him as a part of his system both fundamental and indispensable. So earnestly indeed and so frequently does he insist on the importance of it, that I once believed it to be the one real novelty which distinguished his philosophy from those of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors. And even now, though Mr. Ellis's analysis of the Baconian Induction has given me much new light and considerably modified my opinion in that matter, I am still inclined to think that Bacon himself regarded it not only as a novelty, but as the novelty |