INTRODUCTION. vii 



the Method, a mere instrument i or the discovery and explana 

 tion of truth, still it contains so much deep thought, and so 

 many valuable incidental statements, that it must be ranked 

 very high among the books which make up the literary heri 

 tage of England. I said that it is but a fragment. For he 

 sketched out a perfect work, of which it was to be quite an 

 inferior part : and even of that part, the book, as we have it, 

 contains only a small portion. He purposed to divide the 

 &quot; Instauratio Magna&quot; (for this is the title of the whole) into 

 six parts ; and from the Preface to it, (which, unlike most 

 authors, he wrote first,) and from the &quot; Distributio Operis.&quot; we 

 have full information of his object, and of the intention of each 

 of those six parts. 



(1). First came the Partitiones Scientiarum,&quot; a map of 

 knowledge, as it was at the time; a brief description of the 

 existing state of the whole of learning; with its deficiencies 

 noted, its divisions marked out, and due credit given to what 

 was good. This, an introduction to the whole, to map out the 

 whole land, which Bacon hoped to colonise and cultivate, was 

 first sketched out in the Advancement of Learning, and after 

 wards published at much greater length in Latin in the &quot; l)e 

 Augmcntis Scientiarum,&quot; in the year 1623. This division alone 

 was completed. 



(2). Next came the Novmn Organon ; the new Instrument 

 (or Logic, as he delights to call it) by whose means Nature 

 may be induced to yield up her secrets for the good of man. 

 It was to commence with a destructive treatise ; a treatise 

 which should clear away the phantoms and illusions which had 

 crowded thickly around knowledge : there was to follow a very 



*J C3 rJ 



brief account of the object on which this new instrument was 

 to be employed ; then, in detail, descriptions of the nine &quot; au- 

 xilia intellectus,&quot; which were to assist the mind in the Interpre 

 tation of Nature, and in true and perfect Induction. (Nov. 

 Org. II. 9,1.) Of these nine parts but one is complete; and of 

 the others hardly any trace remains. And it should always be 



