Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/85



The is the next subject of consideration. It thus opens:

His despair of the possibility of completing his important work, of which his Novum Organum was only a portion, appears at the very entrance of the volume, which, instead of being confined to the Novum Organum, exhibits an outline, and only an outline, of the whole of his intended labours.

After his dedication to the king, he, according to his wonted mode, clears the way by a review of the state of learning, which, he says, is neither prosperous nor advanced, but, being barren in effects, fruitful in questions, slow and languid in its improvement, exhibiting in its generality the counterfeit of perfection, ill filled up in its details, popular in its choice, suspected by its very promoters, and therefore countenanced with artifices, it is necessary that an entirely different way from any known by our predecessors must be opened to the human understanding, and different helps be obtained, in order that the mind may exercise its jurisdiction over the nature of things. The intended work is then separated into six parts:

And with respect to each of these parts he explains his intentions.

As to the first, or, he, in 1605, had exhibited an outline in the Advancement of Learning, and lived nearly to complete it in the year 1623. In this treatise he describes the cultivated parts of the intellectual world and the deserts; not to measure out regions, as augurs for divination, but. as generals to invade for conquest.

is a treatise upon the conduct of the understanding in the systematic discovery of truth, or the art of invention by a New Organ: as, in inquiring into any nature, the hydrophobia, for instance, or the attraction of the magnet, the Novum Organum explains a mode of proceeding by which its nature and laws may with certainty be found.

It having been Bacon's favourite doctrine, that important truths are often best discovered in small and familiar instances, as the nature of a commonwealth, in a family and the simple conjugations of society, man and wife, parents and children, master and servant, which are in every cottage; and as he had early taught that all truths, however divisible as lines and veins, are not separable as sections and separations, but partake of one common essence, which, like the drops of rain, fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the general current, it may seem extraordinary that it should not have occurred to him that the mode to discover any truth might, possibly, be seen by the proceedings in a court of justice, where the immediate and dearest interests of men being concerned, and great intellect exerted, it is natural to suppose that the best mode of invention would be adopted.

In a well constituted court of justice the judge is without partiality. He hears the evidence on both sides, and the reasoning of the opposite advocates. He then forms his judgment. This is the mode adopted by Bacon in the Novum Organum for the discovery of all truths. He endeavours to make the philosopher in his study proceed as a judge in his court.

For this purpose his work is divisible into three parts: 1st. The removal of prejudice or the