384 PREFACE TO 



the nature and importance more needed to be pressed upon the 

 attention of mankind, of which the neglect would" be more 

 fatal to the progress of science. That this was in fact his 

 opinion at the very time he was composing the Novum Organum 

 may be inferred from the last aphorism of the first book, as I 

 have pointed out at the end of the preface. That he was still 

 of the same opinion two years after, we have his own express 

 declaration in the Auctoris monitum prefixed to the History of 

 the Winds, where he explains his motives for going on with 

 the third part of the Instauratio, instead of finishing the second. 

 It had occurred to him, he there tells us, that if the Organum 

 should fall into the hands of some man of genius capable of 

 understanding and willing to use it, still without a natural 

 history of the proper kind provided to his hand, he would not 

 \ know how to proceed ; whereas if a full and faithful history of 

 nature and the arts were set before him, he might succeed even 

 by the old method " licet via veteri pergere malint, nee via 

 nostri organi (quae utnobis videtur autunica est aut optima) uti" 

 in building upon it something of solid worth. " Itaque hue 

 res redit," he concludes ; " ut organum nostrum, etiamsi fuerit 

 absolutum, dbsque historid naturali non multum, historia natu- 

 ralis absque organo non parum, instaurationem scientiarum sit 

 provectura." I know not how therefore to escape the con- 

 clusion that, in Bacon's own estimate of his own system, the 

 Natural History held the place of first importance. He 

 regarded it as not less new * than the new method, and as more 

 indispensable. Though the " via nostri organi " still appeared 

 to him to be ff aut unica aut optima" something of substantial 

 worth might, he thought, be accomplished without it. With- 

 out a natural history " tali qualem nunc praecipiemus," he 

 thought no advance of any value could possibly be made. 



What may be the real value of this part of Bacon's system 

 is, of course, quite another question. The evidence just ad- 

 duced goes only to show what was the value which he himself 

 get upon it, and affects the question no otherwise than by giving 

 it a new interest, and suggesting the expediency of considering 



1 His assertion of the novelty is as strong in the one case as in the other. Atque hoc 

 posterius [viz. the use of natural history, " tanquam materia prima philosophise atque 

 verae inductionis supellex sive sylva"J nunc agitur ; nunc inguam, NEQUE UNQUAM 



ANTEHAC." 



