350 PREFACE TO THE NEW ATLANTIS. 



with the helps in head and hand which he had himself 

 wished for. His own intellectual aspirations suggested 

 the result : he had but to set down as known all that 

 le himself most longed to know. [But here he was 

 obliged to stop. He could not describe the process of 

 a perfect philosophical investigation ; because it must 

 of course have proceeded by the method of the Novum 

 Organum, which was not yet expounded. Nor could 

 he give a particular example of the result of such in 

 vestigation, in the shape of a Form or an Axiom ; for 

 that presupposed the completion, not only of the No 

 vum Organum, but (at least in some one subject) of 

 the Natural History also ; and no portion of the Nat 

 ural History complete enough for the purpose was as 

 yet producible. Here therefore he stopped ; and it 

 would almost seem that the nature of the difficulty 

 which stood in his way had reminded him of the course 

 he ought to take ; for just at this point (as we learn 

 from Dr. Rawley) he did in fact leave his fable and 

 return to his work. He had begun it with the inten 

 tion of exhibiting a model political constitution, as well 

 as a model college of natural philosophy ; but &quot; his 

 desire of collecting the natural history diverted him, 

 which he preferred many degrees before it.&quot; And 

 in this, according to his own view of the matter, he 

 was no doubt right ; for though there are few people 

 now who would not gladly give all the Sylva Syl- 

 varum, had there been ten times as much of it, in 

 exchange for an account of the laws, institutions, and 

 administrative arrangements of Bensalem, it was not 

 so with Bacon ; who being deeper read in the phenom 

 ena of the human heart than in those of the material 

 world, probably thought the perfect knowledge of na- 



