PREFACE ix 



sciences by a new method of the interpretation of 

 nature. This scheme again Bacon took long to 

 mature. In the Advancement he has got so far as 

 to contemplate a separate work containing Interpre- 

 tatio Naturae concerning the invention of sciences 1 ; 

 and about the same time he was writing such a work, 

 the Valerius Terminus, Of the Interpretation of Nature 

 (left unfinished, and posthumously published by 

 Stephens in 1784), in which he also contemplates 

 a discourse on Knowledge, roughly in idea corre 

 sponding to the Advancement, as an introduction to 

 the Interpretatio Naturae. The Advancement and the 

 Valerius Terminus therefore imply one another, and 

 show that in 1605 Bacon was already meditating both 

 a survey of knowledge and a logic of its method. In 

 the course of the next two years he went on to con 

 ceive the whole scheme of regeneration, or Instauratio, 

 as he now began to call it, in a work called Partis 

 Instaurationis Secundae Delineatio et Argumentum 

 (written in 1606-7, but left unfinished, and post 

 humously published by Gruter in 1653), wherein 

 he distributed the Instauratio into six parts, of which 

 the survey of the sciences was to be the first, and 

 began the treatment of the method of the sciences 

 as the second part. Finally, in 1620 (aet. 60), he 

 published his great work entitled Instauratio Magna. 

 But in reality it was only an instalment ; beginning 

 with the division into six parts, called Distributio 

 Operis, Bacon next refers his readers to the Advance 

 ment as to some extent representing the first part on 

 the classification of sciences, and then proceeds in the 

 rest of the work to elaborate the second part on the 

 Interpretatio Naturae, or scientific method of induction, 

 under the title by which the work is now best known 

 Novum Organum. 



Bacon did not rest content with referring to the 

 Advancement of Learning as the first part of the 

 Instauratio. He went on to have it translated into 



1 Post, p. 136. 



