34 GENERAL PREFACE TO 



necessarily the form nature, since this is always to be present 

 when the given nature is. Similarly, the second table corre- 

 sponds to the condition that the Form and the given nature are 

 to be absent together, and the third to that of their increasing 

 or decreasing together. 



After the formation of these tables, how is the process of in- 

 duction to be carried into effect ? By a method of exclusion. 

 This method is the essential point of the whole matter, and it 

 will be well to show how much importance Bacon attached 

 to it. 



In the .first place, wherever he speaks of ordinary induc- 

 tion and of his own method he always remarks that the former 

 proceeds " per enumerationem simplicem," that is, by a mere 

 enumeration of particular cases, while the latter makes use of 

 exclusions and rejections. This is the fundamental character of 

 his method, and it is from this that the circumstances which 

 distinguish it from ordinary induction necessarily follow. More- 

 over we are told that whatever may be the privileges of higher 

 intelligences, man can only in one way advance to a knowledge 

 of Forms : he is absolutely obliged to proceed at first by ne- 

 gatives, and then only can arrive at an affirmative when the 

 process of exclusion has been completed (post omnimodam 

 exclusionem). 1 The same doctrine is taught in the exposition 

 of the fable of Cupid. For according to some of the mytho- 

 graphi Cupid comes forth from an egg whereon Night had 

 brooded. Now Cupid is the type of the primal nature of 

 things ; and what is said of the egg hatched by Night refers, 

 Bacon affirms, most aptly to the demonstrations whereby our 

 knowledge of him is obtained ; for knowledge obtained by 

 exclusions and negatives results, so to speak, from darkness and 

 from night. We see, I think, from this allegorical fancy, as 

 jclearly as from any single passage in his writings, how firmly 

 Ifixed in his mind was the idea of the importance, or rather of 

 the necessity, of using a method of exclusion. 



It is not difficult, on Bacon's fundamental hypothesis, to per- 

 ceive why this method is of paramount importance. For assuming 

 that each instance in which the given nature is presented to 

 us can be resolved into (and mentally replaced by) a congeries 

 of elementary natures, and that this analysis is not merely sub- 



1 Nov. Org. ii. 15, 



