106 NOTES TO PREFACE TO 



one case he may not have intended to publish what we know he did 

 intend to write, so in the other he may have intended to write 

 what we know he did not intend to publish. And indeed though 

 the Prooamium stands in Gruter's volume by itself and we cannot 

 know to which of Bacon's projected works on the Interpretation of 

 Nature it was meant to be prefixed, there is none which it seems to 

 fit so well as the Temporis Parties Masculus. Now the Temporis 

 Partus Masculus, as we know from the titles of the three books 

 above quoted, was to contain both the formula Interpretationis and 

 the inventa per eandem. 



All these points will be considered more at large when I come to 

 state the grounds upon which I have assigned to each tract its place 

 in this edition. In the meantime I am unwilling to let any con- 

 clusion of importance appear to rest upon them ; and in the present 

 case all inferences which are in any way dependent upon the assump- 

 tions which I have noticed as questionable may I think be freely 

 dispensed with. That to bring in a new method of Induction was 

 Bacon's central idea and original design, and that the idea of an In- 

 stauratio Magna came after, may in the absence of all evidence to 

 the contrary be safely enough inferred from his own words in the 

 Advancement of Learning ; where after reporting a deficiency of the 

 first magnitude in that department of knowledge which concerns the 

 invention of sciences, a deficiency proved by the barrenness and 

 accounted for by the viciousness and incompetency of the method of 

 induction then in use, he adds, " This part of Invention, concern- 

 ing the Invention of Sciences, I purpose, if God give me leave, here- 

 after to propound ; having digested into two parts ; whereof the one 

 I term Experientia Literata, and the other Interpretatio Naturce 1 ; the 

 former being but a degree and rudiment of the latter. But I will not 

 dwell too long nor speak too great upon a promise." This " Interpre- 

 tatio Naturae " can have been nothing else therefore than a new method 

 of induction to supply the place of the vicious and incompetent me- 

 thod then in use ; and since among all the reported " deficiencies " 

 this is the only one which he himself proposes to supply, for of the 

 others he merely gives specimens to make his meaning clear, we 

 may, I think, safely conclude that this and no other was the great 

 work which he was meditating when he wrote the Advancement of 

 Learning. His expressions moreover seem to imply that this work 

 was already begun and in progress ; and seeing that the Valerius 

 Terminus answers the description both in title and (so far as the first 

 book goes, which is all we know of it) in contents also, why may we 

 not suppose that it was a commencement or a sketch of the very work 



1 The corresponding passage in the De Augment calls it " Interpretatio Naturse 

 sive Novum Organum" 



