370 PREFACE TO 



which I find nothing among Mr. Ellis's papers that can 

 serve as preface. 



In what the distinctive peculiarity of the Baconian philo- 

 sophy really consisted, is a question to which every fresh in- 

 quirer gives a fresh answer. Before I was acquainted with 

 Mr. Ellis's, which is the latest, and formed upon the largest 

 survey and subtlest scrutiny of the evidence, I had endeavoured 

 to find one for myself, and had come to a conclusion which, 

 though quite different from his, is not I think irreconcilable 

 with it, but contains (as I still venture to believe) a part, 

 though a part only, of the truth. And the question which I 

 wish now to raise is whether, as my solution was imperfect 

 from not taking any account of the novelty contained in the 

 method of Induction as Bacon understood it, Mr. Ellis's be not 

 likewise imperfect from not taking sufficient account of the 

 novelty contained in the Natural History as Bacon intended it 

 to be employed ; and whether there be not room for a third 

 solution more complete than either, as including both. 



That the philosophy which Bacon meant to announce was in 

 some way essentially different not only from any that had been 

 before but from any that has been since, is a position from 

 which in both cases the inquiry sets out ; and since it is one 

 which will not perhaps be readily granted by everybody, it 

 may be worth while to explain the considerations which led me 

 to it ; the rather because Mr. Ellis and myself, though pro- 

 ceeding not only independently but by entirely different roads 

 and in pursuit of different objects he endeavouring to pene- 

 trate the secret of Bacon's philosophy, I endeavouring to 

 understand the objects and purposes of his life meet never- 

 theless at this point in the same conclusion. 



The process by which I arrived at it myself, I cannot 

 explain better than by transcribing a paper which I wrote on 

 the subject in 1847 ; at which time I had not seen any part of 

 Mr. Ellis's argument, or heard his opinion upon the question at 

 issue. What my own opinion is now, I will state afterwards ; 

 but first I give the paper exactly as I then wrote it ; the length 

 of the extract being justified at least if there be any truth in 

 the conclusion by the importance of the question at issue ; 

 for it bears upon the business of the present and future quite 

 as much as on the knowledge of the past. The form in which 



