THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. 39 



subject, ideas or conceptions (notiones) reside in some sort in 

 the objects from which we derive them; and it is necessary, in 

 order that the work of induction may be successfully accom- 

 plished, that the process by which they are derived should be 

 carefully and systematically performed. But he had not per- 

 ceived that which now at least can scarcely be doubted of, that 

 the progress of science continually requires the formation _pf 

 new conceptions whereby new principles of arrangement are 

 introduced among the results which had previously been ob- 

 tained, and that from the necessary imperfection of human 

 knowledge our conceptions never, so to speak, exhaust ,the 

 essence of the realities by which they are suggested. The 

 notion of an alphabet of the universe, of which Bacon /has \ X 

 spoken more than once, must therefore be given up ; it could 

 at best be only an alphabet of the present state of knowledge. 

 And similarly of the analysis into abstract natures on which 

 the process of exclusion, as we have seen, depends. No such 

 analysis can be used in the manner which Bacon prescribes to 

 us ; for every advance in knowledge presupposes the introduc- 

 tion of a new conception, by which the previously existing 

 analysis is rendered incomplete, and therefore erroneous. 



We have now, I think, succeeded in tracing the cause both 

 of the peculiarities of Bacon's method, and of its practical 

 inutility. Some additional information may be derived from an 

 examination of the_ variations with which it is presented in 

 different parts of his writings; less however than if we could 

 arrange his smaller works in chronological order. Nevertheless 

 two results, not without their value, may be thus obtained; the 

 one, that it appears probable that Bacon came gradually to see 

 more of the difficulties which beset the practical application of 

 his method; and the o^tljpr, that the doctrine of Forms is in 

 reality an extraneous part of his philosophy. . 



(10.) In the earliest work in which the new method of induc- 

 tion is proposed, namely, the English tract entitled Valerius 

 Terminus, no mention is made of the necessity of correcting 

 commonly received, notions of simple natures. The inductive 

 method is therefore presented in its simplest form, unembar- 

 rassed with that which constitutes its principal difficulty. But 

 when we advance from Valerius Terminus to the Partis 

 secundce Delineatio et Argumentum, which is clearly of a 

 later date, we find that Bacon has become aware of the neces- 



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