420 PREFACE. 



the powers of nature, of this philosophy we can 

 make nothing. If we have not tried it, it is because 

 we feel confident that it would not answer. We re 

 gard it as a curious piece of machinery, very subtle, 

 elaborate, and ingenious, but not worth constructing, 

 because all the work it could do may be done more 

 easily another way. But though this, the favourite 

 child of Bacon s genius which he would fain have 

 made heir of all he had, died thus in the cradle, his 

 genius itself still lives and works among us ; whatever 

 brings us into nearer communion with that is still in 

 teresting, and it is as a product and exponent of Ba 

 con s own mind and character that the Baconian phi 

 losophy, properly so called, retains its chief value for 

 modern men. 



Viewed in this light, the superseded or abandoned 

 pieces which are here gathered together under this 

 third head are among the most interesting of the 

 whole collection. For in them we may trace more 

 than can be traced elsewhere of what may be called 

 the personal history of his great philosophical scheme, 



the practical enterprise in which it engaged him, 

 and its effect on his inner and outer life. We can 

 not indeed trace the Idea back to its great dawn : to 

 the days when, in the fearless confidence of four and 

 twenty, he wrote TEMPORIS PARTUS MAXIMUS at the 

 head of the manuscript in which it was first set forth, 



thinking no doubt in his inexperience that Truth 

 had only to show her face in order to prevail. Our 

 records do not go so far back as that : and before the 

 period at which they begin a shadow had fallen across 

 the prospect. The presumptuous &quot; maximus &quot; has been 

 silently withdrawn and &quot; masculus &quot; put in its place. 



