GENERAL PREFACE 



TO 



BACON'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. 

 BY EGBERT LESLIE ELLIS, 



(1.) OUR knowledge of Bacon's method is much less com- 

 plete than it. is commonly supposed to be. Of the Novum 

 Organum, which was to contain a complete statement of its 

 nature and principles, we have only the first two books ; and 

 although in other parts of Bacon's writings, as for instance in 

 the Cogitata et Visa de Interpretations Natures, many of the 

 ideas contained in these books recur in a less systematic form, 

 Ave yet meet with but few indications of the nature of the sub- 

 jects which were to have been discussed in the others. It 

 seems not improbable that some parts of Bacon's system were 

 never perfectly developed even in his own mind. However 

 this may be, it is certain that an attempt to determine what his 

 method, taken as a whole, was or would have been, must neces- 

 sarily involve a conjectural or hypothetical element ; and it is, I 

 think, chiefly because this circumstance has not been suffi- 

 ciently recognised, that the idea of Bacon's philosophy has 

 generally speaking been but imperfectly apprehended. 



(2.) Of the subjects which were to have occupied the re- 

 mainder of the Novum Organum we learn something from a 

 passage at the end of the second book. 



" Nunc vero," it is said at the conclusion of the doctrine of 

 prerogative instances, " ad adminicula et rectificationes induc- 

 tionis, et deinceps ad concreta, et latentes processus, et latentes 

 achematismos, et reliqua quae aphorismo xxi ordine proposui- 

 mus, pergendum." On referring to the twenty-first aphorism 

 we find a sort of table of contents of the whole work. " Dice- 



c 3 



