36 GENERAL PREFACE TO 



are to be excluded processes which require no higher faculties 

 than ordinary acutencss and patient diligence. There is clearly 

 no room in this mechanical procedure for the display of subtlety 

 or of inventive genius. 



Bacon's method therefore leads to certainty, and may be 

 employed with nearly equal success by all men who are equally 

 diligent. 



In considering the only example which we have of its prac- 

 tical operation, namely the investigation of the 



it is well to remark a circumstance which tends to conceal its 

 real nature. After the three tables of Comparentia, Bacon 

 proceeds to the Exclusiva, and concludes by saying that the 

 process of exclusion cannot at the outset (sub initiis) be per- 

 fectly performed. He therefore proposes to go on to provide 

 additional assistance for the mind of man. These are manifestly 

 to be subsidiary to the method of exclusions ; they are to re- 

 move the obstacles which make the Exclusiva defective and 

 inconclusive. But in the meanwhile, and as it were provi- 

 sionally, the intellect may be permitted to attempt an affirmative 

 determination on the subject before it: " Quod genus tentamenti 

 Permissionem Intellectus, sive Interpretationem inchoatam, sive 

 Vindemiationem primam, appellare consuevimus." The phrase 

 "Permissio Intellectus sufficiently indicates that in this process 

 the mind is suffered to follow the course most natural to it ; it 

 is relieved from the restraints hitherto imposed on it,, and re- 

 verts to its usual state. In this Yindemiatio we accordingly 

 find no reference to the method of exclusion: it rests imme- 

 diately on the three tables of Comparentia; and though of 

 course it does not contradict the results of the Exclusiva, yet 

 on the other hand it is not derived from them. If _we lose 

 Bight of the real nature of this part of the investigation, which 

 is merely introduced by the way "because truth is more easily 

 extricated from error than from confusion," we also lose sight 

 of the scope and purport of the whole method. All that 

 Bacon proposes henceforth to do is to perfect the Exclusiva ; 

 the Vindemiatio prima, though it is the closing member of the 

 example which Bacon makes use of, is not to be taken as the 

 type of the final conclusion of any investigation which he would 

 recognise as just and legitimate. It is only a parenthesis in 



1 Nov. Org. ii. 1120. 



