PREFACE xvii 



himself towards the future regeneration of science. 

 Essentially, Bacon s own contribution consisted in 

 reviving the Atomism of Democritus in the modified 

 form called afterwards the corpuscular philosophy; 

 and already in the Advancement he showed his 

 preference for the natural philosophy of Democritus 

 over that of Plato and Aristotle in particularities of 

 physical causes l . But it was afterwards that he 

 modernized Atomism, first by substituting for the 

 solid indivisible atoms and void, supposed by Demo 

 critus, real particles of a flexible kind like those 

 supposed by Maxwell and Lord Kelvin ; and secondly 

 by looking for the nature of attributes, such as heat, 

 not, as Democritus did, in the statical figures of 

 atoms, but in the dynamical motions of particles, 

 partly perhaps from having come under the influence 

 of Galileo. 



Fifthly, Bacon, even in the Advancement (1605), 

 showed his foresight of the future regeneration of 

 science by the stress he laid on natural history, 

 acquired both by observation and by experiment, as 

 the foundation of natural philosophy. He further 

 foresaw in the Novum Organum (1620) that what 

 natural science wanted was facts accumulated by the 

 associated labours of many inquirers, a task beyond 

 the power of individuals, a royal work for which he 

 solicited the help of King James. Towards the end 

 of his life he began the New Atlantis 2 (1624, aet. 64 , 

 published posthumously by Rawley 1627), in which 

 he got so far as to picture an island of Bensalem 3 , 

 westward of the great Atlantis (that you call 

 America) *, where was established Salomon s House , 

 a college , order , or society dedicated to the 

 study of the works and creatures of God , * the finding 

 out of the true nature of all things, * the knowledge 

 of causes, and secret motions of things; and the 

 enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the 



1 Post, p. 106. * Post, pp. 237-end. 



3 Post, p. 245. * Post, pp. 237, 250. 



