422 PREFACE. 



from the events of later times, we are too apt to over 

 look or forget, namely, how little authority in matters 

 of this kind his name carried with it in those days. 

 &quot; A fool could not have written it, and a wise man 

 would not,&quot; is said to have been the criticism of a 

 great Oxford scholar upon an early sketch of the 

 Instauratio. And how little Bacon could trust for a 

 favourable hearing of his case to his personal reputation 

 among his contemporaries during the first fifty years 

 of his life, appears from his hesitation, uncertainty, 

 and anxiety as to the form in which he should cast it, 

 and the manner in which he should bring it forward. 

 For we find among these fragments not merely suc 

 cessive drafts of the same design, (which would prove 

 nothing more than solicitude to do the work well,) 

 but also experimental variations of the design itself, in 

 which the same matter is dressed up in different dis 

 guises, with the object apparently of keeping the author 

 out of sight ; as if he had thought that a project of 

 such magnitude would be entertained less favourably if 

 associated with the person of one who had done noth 

 ing as yet to prove any peculiar aptitude for scientific 

 investigation, or to entitle him to speak on such mat 

 ters with authority. Thus at one time he seems to 

 have thought of bringing his work out under a fanciful 

 name, probably with some fanciful story to explain it ; 

 as we see in the mysterious title &quot; Valerius Terminus, 

 &c. with the Annotations of Hermes Stella&quot; At an 

 other he presents the same argument in a dramatic 

 form ; as in the Redargutio Philosophiarum, where 

 great part of what became afterwards the first book 

 of the Novum Organum is given as a report of a speech 

 addressed to an assembly of philosophers at Paris. At 



