76 PREFACE TO 



of the third part of the Instauratio is merely a fragment for 

 the Sylva Sylvarum, a miscellaneous collection of observations 

 gathered for the most part out of books, nowise completes 

 Bacon's general design. In truth it is a design which cannot 

 be completed, there being no limit to the number of the " Phse- 

 nomena universi " which are potentially if not actually cognis- 

 able ; and it is to be observed that even if all the facts actually 

 known at any instant could be collected and systematised (and 

 even this is plainly impossible), yet still Bacon's aim would not 

 be attained. For these facts alone would be insufficient as 

 materials for the sixth part of the Instauratio, in which was to 

 be contained all the knowledge of Nature man is capable of. 

 Every day brings new facts to light not less entitled than 

 those previously known to find a place in a complete description 

 of the phenomena of the universe. 1 From many places in 

 Bacon's writings it appears, as I have elsewhere remarked, that 

 he had formed no adequate conception of the extent and variety 

 of Nature. In a letter to E.. P. Baranzan, who had apparently 

 remarked by way of objection to Bacon's scheme of philosophy 

 that a complete natural history would be a work of great extent 

 and labour, Bacon observes that it would perhaps be sixfold 

 as voluminous as that of Pliny. "We have here therefore a sort 

 of estimate of the limits which, in his judgment, the third part 

 of the Instauratio would not exceed. What now exists of it is 

 perhaps one twentieth in magnitude of this estimate. 



Even the second part of the Instauratio, the Novum Orga- 

 num itself, is incomplete. The second book concludes with the 

 doctrine of prerogative instances. But in its twenty-first aphor- 

 ism a number of subjects are mentioned of which this doctrine 

 is the first, the last being the " Scala ascensoria et descensoria 

 axiomatum." Neither this, nor any of these subjects after the 

 first, except the last but one, is anywhere discussed in Bacon's 



1 This \pould be true, I think, of all new facts which were not obviously reconcilable 

 with laws previously known. But is it not conceivable that so complete a knowledge 

 might be attained of the laws of Nature, that it could not be increased or affected by 

 the discovery of any new/uc< in Nature ? If we had as complete a knowledge of other 

 laws of Nature as we have of gravitation, for instance, new facts wpuld still come to 

 light, but with respect to the laws themselves they would all say the same thing, and 

 therefore bring no new knowledge. Every new application of mechanical power con- 

 tains some new fact more or less connected with gravitation ; yet unless a machine can V 

 be made which shall produce results not only new (i. e. such as had never been pro- 

 duced before) but inexplicable by the received theory of gravitation, are we not 

 entitled to say that we know all that can be known about gravitation ? J. S. 



