96 PREFACE TO 



to rule and law, and not as hitherto in a desultory and irregular 

 manner. Again, when the materials required have been col- 

 lected, the mind will not be able to deal with them without 

 assistance and memoriter : all discoveries ought to be based upon 

 written records " nulla nisi de scripto inventio probanda est." 

 This is what Bacon calls experientia litterata 1 , his meaning 

 apparently being that out of the storehouse of natural history 

 all the facts connected with any proposed subject of investiga- 

 tion should be extracted and reduced to writing before anything 

 else is done. Furthermore, all these facts must not only be 

 reduced to writing, but arranged tabularly. In dealing with 

 facts thus collected and arranged, we are to regard them chiefly 

 as the materials for the construction of axioms, our path leading 

 us upwards from particulars to axioms, and then downwards 

 from axioms to works ; and the ascent from particulars to 

 axioms must be gradual, that is axioms of a less degree of gene- 

 rality must always be established before axioms of a higher. 

 Again a new form of induction is to be introduced ; for induc- 

 tion by simple enumeration is childish and precarious. But 

 true induction analyses nature by rejections and exclusions, and 

 concludes affirmatively after a sufficient number of negatives. 

 And our greatest hope rests upon this way of induction. 

 Also the axioms thus established are to be examined whether 

 they are of wider generality than the particulars employed in 

 their construction, and if so, to be verified by comparing them 

 with other facts, " per novorum particularium designationem 2 , 

 quasi fidejussione quadam." Lastly, the sciences must be kept 

 in connexion with natural philosophy. 



Bacon then goes on (108 114.) to state divers grounds of 

 hope derived from other sources than those of which he has 

 been speaking^ namely, the errors hitherto committed. The 

 first is that without any method of invention men have made 

 certain notable discoveries ; how many more, then, and greater, 



1 "Ilia vero in usum veniente, ab experientia factd demum literatd, melius sperau- 

 dum." In Montagu's edition literatd is printed incorrectly with a capital letter ; 

 which makes it seem as if the experientia facta literata here spoken of were the same 

 as the experientia quam vocamus literatam in Aph. 103. But they are, in fact, 

 two different things ; the one being opposed to experience which proceeds without any 

 written record of its results ; the other to vaga experientia et se tantum sequens ex- 

 perience which proceeds without any method in its inquiries. See my note on Aph. 

 101. /. S. 



2 I understand designatio here to mean discovery. The test of the truth of the 

 axiom was to be the discovery by its light of new particulars. See Valerius Terminus, 

 ch. xii., quoted in note on Aph. 106. /. S. 



