2*-' : : 'RECORD OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 



Bacon came early to believe that the method of investigation 

 which he advocated would be best promoted by the corporate 

 action of men who could devote their whole energies to its pursuit. 

 As far back as the year 1617, before the publication of his ' Novum 

 Organon ', he had already composed his ' New Atlantis ', in which 

 he embodied his ideal conception of how such corporate action 

 might be organized and established. His vivid imagination 

 portrayed, in a kind of allegorical picture, a carefully planned 

 and well-endowed college, consisting of a company of thirty-six 

 ' Fellows ' l divided into groups, each of w r hich should be charged 

 with a special department of inquiry or research. The field of 

 enterprise was to embrace the whole of Nature, and was to be 

 both theoretical and practical, with the view, on the one hand, of 

 unravelling * the causes of things ', and, on the other, of obtaining 

 such a knowledge of facts as would lead to new discoveries and 

 inventions. One-half of the Fellows were to be employed in 

 collecting from foreign countries and abstracting from books and 

 from mechanical arts and liberal sciences all that had been 

 previously discovered or invented. The rest of the company, 

 consisting of six groups, were to be variously employed in trying 

 new experiments, tabulating former experiments and results, and 

 endeavouring to draw forth conclusions useful ' for man's life and 

 knowledge ' and to establish generalizations that might lead to 

 ' greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms \ 2 



Bacon died in 1626. His * New Atlantis ', which had remained 

 among his papers, was published the following year, and attracted 

 so much attention that in forty-three years no fewer than ten 

 editions of it had been issued. When we remember what a 

 succession of crises in the political history of this country these 

 years comprised, we may in some measure realize the strength of 

 the movement which the great philosopher had set on foot, and 

 which could thus advance in the midst of civil war and social 

 confusion. He did not live to see any attempt made to give 



appeared. He even went so far as to affirm that the deductive philosophy which he 

 decried, and which was to be splendidly illustrated by Newton and other workers within 

 the Royal Society, had been destructive of practical invention ' if the truth must be 

 spoken/ he says, s when the rational and dogmatic sciences began, the discovery of useful 

 works came to an end." Nov. Org. II. xxxi. 



1 This word is used by Bacon. 2 ' New Atlantis.' 



