THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. 43 



made to correspond with the praeceptum operandi, or practical 

 direction. 1 The latter is to be "certum, liberum, et disponens 

 sive in ordine ad actionem." Now a direction to produce the 

 Form as a means of producing the given nature is certain, 

 because the presence of the Form necessarily determines that of 

 the nature. It is free, because it requires only that to be done 

 which is necessary, since the nature can never be present unless 

 its Form is so too. Thus far the agreement between the prac- 

 tical and the scientific view is satisfactory. But to the third 

 property which the practical direction is to possess, namely 

 its being in ordine ad actionem, or such as to facilitate the 

 production of the proposed result, corresponds the condition 

 that the Form is to be "the limitation of a more general 

 nature ; " that is to say, the Form presents itself as a limita- 

 tion of something more general than the given nature, and 

 as determining, not merely logically but also causatively, the 

 existence of the latter. At this point the divergence between 

 the practical and the scientific view becomes manifest ; practical 

 operations do not, generally speaking, present to us anything 

 analogous to the limitation here spoken of, and there is no 

 reason to suppose that it is easier to see how this limitation is 

 to be introduced than to see how the original problem, the Jf 

 apxfjs irpoKslfisvov, may be solved. But this divergence seems 

 to show that the two views are in their origin heterogeneous ; 

 that the one contains the fundamental idea of Bacon's method, 

 while the other represents the historical element of his philo- 

 sophy. We shall however hereafter have occasion to suggest 

 considerations which may seem to modify this conclusion. 



(12.) In a survey of Bacon's method it is not necessary to 

 say much of the doctrine of prerogative instances, though it 

 occupies the greater part of the second book of the Novurn 

 Organum. It belongs to the unfinished part of that work : at 

 least it is probable that its practical utility would have been 

 explained when Bacon came to speak of the Adminicula ^ 

 Inductionis. 



Twenty-seven kinds of instances are enumerated, which are >_ 

 said to excel ordinary instances either in their practical or their 

 theoretical usefulness. To the word instance Bacon gives a 

 wide range of signification. It corresponds more nearly to 



1 Nov. Org. ii. 4., which is the best corameo* oa the dictum, Knowledge is power, 



