THE NOVUM ORGANUM. 79 



Organum. We may therefore conjecture that it was about this 

 time that Bacon addressed himself to the great work of com- 

 posing the Novum Organum 1 ; and this agrees with what 

 Raw ley says of its having been twelve years in hand. This 

 view also explains why the whole substance of the Cogitata et 



Visa is reproduced in the first book of the Novum Organum ; 

 for this tract was designed to be an introduction to a particular 

 example of the new method of induction, such as that which we 

 find near the beginning of the second book. Bacon's purpose 

 in writing it was therefore the same as that which he had in 

 view in the first book of the Novum Organum 9 namely to 

 procure a favourable reception for an example and illustration 

 of his method. What has been said may be in some measure 

 confirmed by comparing the Cogitata et Visa with an earlier 

 tract, namely the Partis secundce Delineatio et Argumentum. 

 When he wrote this tract Bacon did not propose to set forth 

 his method merely by means of an example ; on the contrary, 

 the three ministrations to the sense, to the memory, and to the 

 reason, of which the last is the new method of induction, were 

 to be set forth in order and didactically. Whereas in the 

 Novum Organum Bacon remarks, (< incipiendum est & fine " 

 (that is, the method of induction must be set forth before the 

 method of collecting facts and that of arranging them so as 

 best to assist the memory) ; and having said this, he goes on at 

 once to his example, namely, the investigation of the Form of 

 heat. Thus it appears that after Bacon had not only decided 

 on writing a great work on the reform of philosophy, but had 

 also determined on dividing it into parts of which the second 

 was to contain the exposition of his new method, he in some 

 measure changed his plan, and resolved to set forth the essential 

 and operative part of his system chiefly by means of an example. 

 This change of plan appears to be marked by the Cogitata et 



Visa, a circumstance which makes this tract one of the most 

 interesting of the precursors of the Novum Organum. 



That the Partis secundce Delineatio is earlier than the Cogi- 



1 In the Commentarhts solutus, under date July 26. 1608, I find the following 

 memorandum: " The finishing the Aphorisms, Clavls interpretationis, and then setting 

 forth the book," and in the same page, a little after, " Imparting my Cogitata et Visa, 

 with choice, ut videbitur." The aphorisms here spoken of may have been the 

 "Aphorismi etConsilia de auxiliis mentis et accensione luminis naturalis;" a fragment 

 containing the substance of the first, second, and third aphorisms of the first book of 

 the Novum Organum, and the first, third, and sixteenth of the second. Clavis inter- 

 pretationis was probably the name which was afterwards exchanged for Novum Organum. 

 J. S. 



