PREFACE. 



WE have now collected all of Bacon s philosophical 

 works which there is reason to believe he would him 

 self have cared to preserve. The rest contain but 

 little matter of which the substance may not be found 

 in one part or another of the preceding volumes, re 

 duced to the shape in which he thought it would be 

 most effective. In his eyes, those which follow belong 

 ed to the part of the race which was past and was not 

 to be looked back upon ; for the end which he was 

 pursuing lay still far before him, and his great anxiety 

 was to bequeath the pursuit to a second generation, 

 which should start fresh from the point where he was 

 obliged to leave it. 



It is not so however with us. In our eyes the in 

 terest which attaches to his labours is of a different 

 kind. We no longer look for the discovery of any 

 great treasure by following in that direction. His 

 peculiar system of philosophy, that is to say, the 

 peculiar method of investigation, the &quot; organum,&quot; the 

 &quot; formula,&quot; the &quot; clavis,&quot; the &quot; ars ipsa interpretandi 

 naturam,&quot; the &quot; filum Labyrinthi,&quot; or by whichever 

 of its many names we choose to call that artificial 

 process by which alone he believed that man could 

 attain a knowledge of the laws and a command over 



