THE NOVUM ORCANUM. 101 



sciences, but fully recognises them as excellent in their proper 

 place and use, and would have them honoured and cultivated 

 accordingly. 



These explanations, together with some remarks (129), by 

 way of encouragement to followers and fellow-labourers, on 

 the dignity, importance, and grandeur of the end in view, 

 bring the preliminary considerations to a close, and clear tha 

 way for the exposition of the art of interpretation itself; which 

 is commenced, but not completed, in the second book. What 

 this art was, has been fully discussed in the general preface, 

 and it is not necessary therefore to follow the subject further 

 here. Only it is important to remark that whatever value 

 Bacon may have attached to it, he certainly did not at this time 

 profess to consider it either as a thing absolutely necessary, or 

 even as the thing most necessary, for any real progress in science. 

 In the concluding aphorism of the first book he distinctly warns 

 the reader that the precepts which he is about to give, though 

 he believes them to be very useful and sound, and likely to 

 prove a great help, are not offered either as perfect in them- 

 selves or as so indispensable that nothing can be done without 

 them. Three things only he represents as indispensable : 1st, 

 ut "justam naturae et experientiaB historian! praesto haberent 

 homines atque in ea sedulo versarentur ; " 2nd, " ut receptas 

 opiniones et notiones deponerent ; " 3rd, " ut mentem a gene- 

 ralissimis et proximis ab illis ad tempus cohiberent." These 

 three conditions being secured, the art of interpretation (being 

 indeed the true and natural operation of the mind when freed 

 from impediments) might, he thinks, suggest itself without a 

 teacher: "foreut etiam vi proprid et genuin& mentis, absque 

 alia" arte, in formam nostram interpretandi incidere possent ; est 

 enim interpretatio verum et naturale opus mentis, demptis iis 

 quse obstant : " an admission which helps to account for the fact 

 that during the five years which he afterwards devoted to the 

 developement of his philosophy, he applied himself almost ex- 

 clusively to the natural history ; leaving the exposition of his 

 method of interpretation still incomplete. For it cannot be 

 denied that, among the many things which remained to be done, 

 the setting forward of the Natural History was, according to 

 this view, the one which stood next in order of importance. 

 In furtherance of the two other principal requisites, he had al- 



II 3 



