PREFACE. 421 



Instead of that overconfidence in the sympathy of his 

 generation we find what looks like an overapprehension 

 of hostility. And it is in deprecating general objec 

 tions ; in answering, mollifying, conciliating, or con 

 triving to pass by prejudices ; in devising prefaces, 

 apologies, modes of putting his case and selecting his 

 audience so as to obtain a dispassionate hearing for 

 it ; that we find him, if not chiefly, yet much and 

 anxiously employed. 



It is probably to the experiences and discouragements 

 of this part of his career that we owe the greater part 

 of the first book of the Novum Organum, which em 

 bodies all the defensive measures into which they drove 

 him ; but though the result may be seen there, the 

 history may be better traced in these fragments. It 

 is in them that we can best see how early this idea of 

 recovering to Man the mastery over Nature presented 

 itself to him ; presented itself not as a vague specula 

 tion or poetic dream, but as an object to be attempted ; 

 the highest at which a man could aim, yet not too high 

 for man to aim at ; how certain he felt that it might 

 be accomplished if men would but make the trial fair 

 ly ; how clearly he saw or thought he saw the way to 

 set about it ; how vast his expectations of the good to 

 come ; how unshakable his confidence in the means 

 to be used ; what immense intellectual operations that 

 confidence gave him courage to enter upon and patience 

 to proceed with, deliberately, alone, year after year, 

 and decade after decade, still hoping for success in the 

 end, delays, distractions, disappointments, discourage 

 ments internal and external, notwithstanding. They 

 serve moreover to remind us of another fact which it 

 is not unimportant to remember, and which, judging 



