THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. 



41 



Bacon had once proposed to overcome at the outset of his 

 undertaking remained to the last unconquered. The doctrine 

 of the Novum Organum (that we must first employ commonly j 

 received notions, and afterwards correct them) is expressly laid 

 down in the De Inter pretatione Natures Sententm Duodecim. l 

 Of this however the date is uncertain. 



It is clear that while any uncertainty remains as to the value 

 of the conceptions (notiones) employed in the process of exclu- 

 sion, the claim to absolute immunity from error which Bacon 

 has made on behalf of his general method, must be more or less 

 modified ; and of this he seems to have been aware when he 

 wrote the second book of the Novum Organum. 2 



(11.) Thus much of the theory of the formation of conceptions. 

 With regard to the doctrine of Forms, it is in the first place to be 

 observed that it is not mentioned as a part of Bacon's system, 

 either in Valerius Terminus or in the Partis secundce Delineatio, 

 or in the De Inter pretatione Natures Sententioe Duodecim, although 

 in the two last-named tracts the definition of science which is 

 found at the outset of the second book of the Novum Organum 

 is in substance repeated. This definition, as we have seen, 

 makes the discovery of Forms the aim and end of science ; but in 

 both cases the wordjform is replaced by causes. It is however 

 to be admitted that in the Advancement of Learning^ published 

 in 1605, Forms are spoken of as one of the subjects of Meia- 

 physique. Their not being mentioned except ex obliquo in 

 Valerius Terminus is more remarkable, because Bacon has there 

 given a distinct name to the process which he afterwards called 

 the discovery of the Form. He calls it the freeing of a direction, 

 and remarks that it is not much other matter than that which 

 in the received philosophies is termed the Form or formal cause. 

 Forms are thus mentioned historically, but in the dogmatic 

 statement of his own view they are not introduced at all. 3 



The essential character of Bacon's philosophy, namely the 

 analysis of the concrete into the abstract, is nowhere more pro- 

 minent than in Valerius Terminus. It is there said " that 

 every particular that worketh any effect is a thing compounded 

 more or less of diverse single natures, more manifest and more 

 obscure, and that it appeareth not to whether (which) of the 



1 Vide viii. of this tract. 2 Nov. Org. ii. 19. 



3 I refer to my preface to Valtrius Terminus for an illustration of some of the diffi- 

 culties of this very obscure tract. 



