THE PARASCEVE. 383 



or in the practicability of it. It was not that when he came to 

 closer quarters with the subject, he felt that he was himself 

 unable to deal with it : Two years after the publication of the 

 first part of the Novum Organum, and three years before his 

 death, he speaks of the second part as a thing yet to be done, 

 but adds, " quam tamen animo jam complexus et metitus sum." 1 

 It was not that he thought the description he had already given 

 sufficient: In the winter of 1622, he tells us that there are 

 " haud pauca, eaque ex pr&cipuis" still wanting. It was not that 

 he had found any disciple or fellow-labourer to whom he might 

 intrust the completion of his unfinished task : To the very last 

 he felt himself alone in his work. It was not from inadvertence: 

 He left the Novum Organum for the Natural History deli- r 

 berately, because it seemed upon consideration the better and 

 more advisable course ; " quare omnino et ante omnia in hoc 

 incumbere satius et consultius visum est." It was not that he 

 wanted either time or industry ; for during the five succeeding 

 years he completed the De Augmentis, and composed his his- 

 tories of the Winds, of Life and Death, of Dense and Rare ; 

 his lost treatise on Heavy and Light, his lost Abecedarium 

 Natures, his New Atlantis, his Sylva Sylvarum. Why did he 

 employ no part of that time in completing the description of ^ 

 the new machine ? in explaining how he proposed to supply the 

 defects 2 and rectify the errors 3 of the imperfect logical pro- 

 cess which he had already exhibited ; how to adapt the mode of 

 inquiry to the nature of the subject ' ; how to determine what 

 questions ought to be dealt with first, what "natures" to 

 have precedence in the order of inquiry 5 ; above all, how to ascer- 

 tain where the inquiry might safely terminate as having left no 

 " nature " in the universe unchallenged 6 , a security without 

 which the whole process must always have been in danger of 

 vitiation from an " instance contradictory" remaining behind? 

 To me the question appears to admit of but one answer. He 

 considered the collection of natural history upon the plan 

 he meditated, to be, in practice at least, a more important part 

 of his philosophy than the Organum itself, a work of which 



1 Letter to Fulgenzio. 2 De Adminiculis Inductionis. 



3 De Rectificatione Inductionis. 



4 De Variatione Inquisitionis pro natura subjecti. 



5 De Praerogativis Natm-arum quatenus ad inquisitionem, sive de eo quod inquiren- 

 dum est prius et posterius. 



De Terminis Inquisitionis, sive de Synopsi omnium naturarum in univer'so. 



