THE PARASCEVE. 385 



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more carefully than has yet, I think, been done, whether his 

 advice on this head might not be followed I do not say as 

 far as he intended but much further than has yet been tried ; 

 with effects I do not say such as he anticipated but larger 

 than we are likely to get any other way. 



That he himself indeed, even if all mankind had united to 

 carry his plan into effect, would have been disappointed with 

 the result, I have little doubt. For I suppose the collected 

 observations of all the world, reduced to writing, digested, 

 and brought into his study, would not have sufficed to give 

 him that knowledge of the forms of nature which was to carry 

 with it the command over her powers. He would have found 

 no doubt, upon trial, that his scheme involved difficulties of 

 which he had formed no conception. He would have found 

 that the facts which must be known in order to complete the 

 three tables of comparence, and to " perfect the exclusiva" were 

 so infinite in number that to gather them by simple observa- 

 tion without some theoretic principle of selection would be an 

 endless task, and to deal with them when gathered a hopeless 

 one. He might still indeed have hoped to arrive ultimately 

 at an alphabet of nature (her principles being probably few and 

 simple, though her phenomena so enormously complex) ; but 

 he would have found that a dictionary or index of nature (and 

 such was to be the office of the Natural History), to be complete 

 enough for the purposes of the Novum Organum, must be 

 nearly as voluminous as Nature herself. He would have found 

 it necessary, therefore (as I suppose all inventors have done both 

 before and since his time), to make material changes in his ori- 

 ginal plan of operation, and to reduce his hopes far below their 

 original dimensions. But a man may be in the right way to 

 his end, though the end itself be further off than he imagines ; 

 and before we cast Bacon's plan finally aside, we may be fairly 

 called upon to show either that the way he wanted us to go is 

 in its nature impracticable, or that there is better hope of 

 arriving at the desired end by some other. 



Mr. Ellis's judgment upon the first point may be partly 

 gathered from his general remarks upon the third part of the 

 Instauratio ; but I am fortunately in possession of his opinion 

 (called forth by the exposition of my own views in the dialogue 

 above quoted) upon the specific practical question now under 

 discussion. It was communicated to me in a letter dated 13th 



VOL. i. c c 



