378 PREFACE TO 



A. 



I see. The manuscript is the volume of Nature. The learned 

 linguist and expert maker-out of puzzles is Galileo or one of his 

 school. The work on the laws of language is the Novum Organum. 

 The index is the Natural and experimental History quce sit in ordine 

 ad condendam Philosophiam. The making-out of the words one by 

 % one is the Interpretation of Nature 



B. 



And the ultimate reading of the whole book is the " Historia 

 Illuminata sive Veritas fierum ;" the " Philosophia Secunda ;" the 

 sixth and last part of the Instauration ; the consummation which 

 Bacon knew he was not to be permitted himself to see, but trusted 

 that (if men were true to themselves) the Fortune of the Human 

 Race would one day achieve. 



A. 



And you think that they have not been true to themselves ? 



B. 



Why what have they done with this work since he left it ? There 

 it lies to speak for itself, sticking in the middle of the Novum 

 Organum. No attempt has been made, that I can hear of, to carry 

 it out further. People seem hardly to know that it is not complete. 

 John Mill observes that Bacon's method of inductive logic is defec- 

 tive, but does not advert to the fact that of ten separate processes 

 which it was designed to include, the first only has been explained. 

 The other nine he had in his head, but did not live to set down 

 more of them than the names. And the particular example which 

 he has left of an inductive inquiry does not profess to be carried 

 beyond the first stage of generalization, the vindemiatio prima as 

 he calls it. 



A. 



It may be so ; but why have they not attempted to carry his pro- 

 cess out further ? Is it not because they have found that they can 

 get on faster with their old tools ? 



B. 



Because they think they can get on faster ; you cannot say they 

 have found it until they have tried. 



A. 



Have they not tried Bacon's way partially, and found it not so 

 handy ? Has not Sir John Herschel, for instance, tried the use of 

 his famous classification of Instances, and pronounced it "more 

 apparent than real ? " And is it not a fact that no single discovery 

 of importance has been actually made by proceeding according to the 

 method recommended by Bacon ? I am sure I have heard as mucb 



