382 PREFACE TO 



justify or to understand Bacon's assertion that his system was 

 essentially new." He then proceeds to point out one great 

 peculiarity by which it aspired to differ from all former systems 

 a peculiarity residing in the supposed perfection of the 

 logical machinery ; which, since it would of itself account for 

 Bacon's belief of its importance no less than for his assertion 

 of its novelty, does certainly supply a new explanation unen- 

 cumbered with the difficulties pointed out in the foregoing ex- 

 tract. But there is another difficulty which it leaves behind. 

 It is impossible, I think, to reconcile with this supposition 

 the course which Bacon afterwards took in expounding and 

 developing his system. For if the great secret which he had, 

 or thought he had, in his keeping, lay only, or even chiefly, in 

 the perfection of the logical machinery in the method of in- 

 duction ; if this method was a kind of mechanical process an 

 organum or engine at once " wholly new," " universally 

 applicable," "in all cases infallible," and such as anybody 

 might manage ; if his explanation of this method in the second 

 book of the Novum Organum is so incomplete that it leaves all 

 the principal practical difficulties unexplained ; and if it was a 

 thing which nobody but himself had any notion of, or any be- 

 lief in ; how is it that, during the remaining five years of his 

 life years of eager and unremitting labour, devoted almost 

 exclusively to the exposition of his philosophy he made no 

 attempt to complete the explanation of it? Why did he leave 

 the Novum Organum as it was, being a work which he could 

 have completed alone, and which indeed he only could have 

 completed, and apply himself with advised and deliberate in- 

 dustry to the collection of Natural History ; a work which he 

 knew he could not carry to perfection himself, even in any of 

 its parts ; which he had once thought it a waste of time to 

 employ himself upon, as being within every man's capacity ; 

 concerning the execution of which he had already given suffi- 

 cient general directions; and of which, even when accom- 

 plished, the right use could not be made except in virtue of 

 that very method or logical machinery, the constitution and 

 management of which still remained to be explained? It was 

 not that he had changed his opinion as to the value of it: 

 His sense of the difficulties may have increased, his views as to 

 details may have altered ; but there is no reason to think 

 that he ever lost any part of his faith either in the importance 



