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amples of our method and course of investigation and discovery, as exhibited in particular subjects; preferring the most dignified subjects of our inquiry, and such as differ most from each other, so that in every branch we may have an example. Nor do we speak of those examples, which are added to particular, precepts and rules by way of illustration (for we have furnished them abundantly in the Second Part of our work), but we mean actual types and models, calculated to place, as it were, before our eyes ["sub oculos"] the whole process of the mind, and the continuous frame ["fabricam"] and order of discovery in particular subjects selected for their variety and importance. For we recollect that in mathematics, with the diagram before our eyes, the demonstration easily and clearly followed, but without this advantage, everything appeared more intricate and more subtle than was really the case. We devote, therefore, the Fourth Part of our work to such examples, which is in fact nothing more than a particular and fully developed application of the Second Part."1

As it is said in his letter to Fulgentius, the great Instauration began with the De Augmentis Scientiarum as the first part; the Novum Organum was the second part; the Natural History was the third part; these Examples were to be the fourth part; the Prodromus (or forerunner of the Second Philosophy) was to be the fifth part; and the sixth part would complete philosophy itself, and "touch almost the universals of nature." In this consummation of the Second Philosophy, he would, of course, arrive again at the Philosophia Prima, by that road, and in that way; and so, philosophy itself would necessarily include both the First and the Second Philosophy in one Universal Science, which would amount to "Sapience," or "the knowledge of all things divine and human." 2 In this letter, the subject of the Fourth Part is introduced in connection with certain

1 Distribution of the Work; Works (Mont.), XIV. 22; (Spedd., I. 225). 2 De Aug. Scient.

portions of the Natural History, concerning winds, and touching life and death, which he mentions as "mixed writings composed of natural history, and a rude and imperfect instrument, or help of the understanding." He then proceeds to say, that this Fourth Part should contain many examples of that instrument, more exact and much more fitted to rules of induction." From these expressions alone it might be inferred that these examples were to be confined strictly to matters of physical inquiry; but when it is considered, that the scope of his system always embraced the whole field of knowledge (however divided into parts), of which his principal divisions were God, Nature, and Man, it may not appear incredible that this instrument or help of the understanding, and these examples, were to find an application to man and human affairs as well as to mere physical nature.

Indeed, all question of this would seem to be set at rest by his Thirteen Tables of the Thread of the Labyrinth; for, in the paper entitled "Filum Labyrinthi sive Inquisitio Legitima de Motu," these tables are enumerated in like manner as a part of Natural Philosophy, and in the Novum Organum, they are spoken of as included in the Fourth Part. The only specimens of them actually found attempted in his works are certain fragments, under such titles as Heat and Cold, Sound and Hearing, Dense and Rare, the History of Winds, and the like; but that the entire series was to have a much wider range, is evident from his own "Digest of the Tables," which is as follows:

"The first are tables of motion; the second, of heat and cold; the third, of the rays of things and impressions at a distance; the fourth, of vegetation and life; the fifth, of the passions of the animal body; the sixth, of sense and objects; the seventh, of the affections of the mind; the eighth, of the mind and its faculties. These pertain to the separation of nature, and concern Form; but these which follow pertain to the construction of nature, and con

cern Matter. Ninth, of the architecture of the world; tenth, of great relations, or the accidents of essence; eleventh, of the composition of bodies or inequality of parts; twelfth, of species or the ordinary fabric and combinations of things; and thirteenth, of small relations or properties. And so a universal inquisition may be completed in thirteen tables."1

It is not easy to understand exactly what his meaning was; but he probably considered motion as a phenomenal effect of force; and there is no motion without moving power. Addressing himself to an inquiry into the nature, laws, limitations, and modes of power, or forces, by experimental methods, and finding the subject presented in nature in the shape of phenomenal facts as effects, he would naturally begin with a table of motions. Indeed, he defined Heat as being nothing else but motion, or moving force; a doctrine which our more modern science, from Rumford to Tyndall, confirms. Pursuing the study to the end, he would expect to arrive, in time, at a knowledge of "the last power and cause of nature." But, at first, he would begin with the secondary powers or forces, taking the phenomenal effects as facts, in such subjects as heat and cold, the radiating motions producing impressions at a distance (what are now treated of under the names of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and the like), sound and hearing, density and rarity, the ebb and flow of the sea, winds, &c. He then comes to the motions of vegetable and animal life, the passions, the senses, the affections, or emotions, and, at last, to the mind itself and the mental faculties. In all this, the inquiry looks to the form or law. Bacon's idea of form would seem to have been identical with what we would now call law of power giving form to itself. And so this portion of the Tables would span the whole field of sensible and visible motions in nature, beginning with the

1 Works (Boston), VII. 170.

2 Trans. of Nov. Org., II. 2; Works (Boston), VIII. 168; 206.

mind of nature, or thinking power in the Creator, and ending in mind, or finite thinking power in man. The other portion concerned rather the architectural structure of the universe, the greater accidents or relative qualities of essences, the composition of bodies, the species of things, whether vegetable, animal, or mineral, and finally, the lesser accidents, relative qualities or properties of material things; and all this concerned matter as it is presented to observation in nature, as such.

It is plain we were to have Tables of the passions, the senses, the emotions or affections, and the faculties of the mind. There was to be not only a contemplative science, but an active science pointing to practical uses. And these illustrative examples of the Fourth Part may very well have been intended to embrace all branches of this "universal inquisition."

In fact, so much is expressly declared in the Novum Organum, thus:

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It may also be asked (in the way of doubt rather than objection) whether I speak of natural philosophy only, or whether I mean that the other sciences, logic, ethics, and politics, should be carried on by this method. Now I certainly mean what I have said to be understood of them all; and as the common logic, which governs by the syllogism, extends not only to natural but to all sciences; so does mine also, which proceeds by induction, embrace everything. For I form a history and tables of discovery for anger, fear, shame, and the like; for matters political; and again for the mental operations of memory, composition, and division, judgment, and the rest; not less than for cold, or light, or vegetation, or the like. But, nevertheless, since my method of interpretation (after the history has been prepared and duly arranged) regards not the working and discourse of the mind only (as the common logic does), but the nature of things also, I supply the mind with such rules and guidance that it may in every case

apply itself to the nature of things. And, therefore, I deliver many and diverse precepts in the doctrine of Interpretation, which in some measure modify the method of invention according to the quality and condition of the subject of inquiry.'

"1

This Fourth Part, then, was not to be strictly a system of psychology, but it was to arrive at a knowledge of the actual nature of things, in a visible representation of the whole process of the mind in the continuous fabric and order of discovery in these special and very noble subjects. The method was to be according to the quality and condition of the subject. He intimates also, that his method cannot be brought down to common apprehension, save by effects and works only. He does not desire to pull down or destroy the philosophy, arts, and sciences "at present in use," but is glad to see them "used, cultivated, and honored." But he gives "constant and distinct warning, that by the methods now in use, neither can any great progress be made in the doctrines and contemplative part of sciences, nor can they be carried out to any magnitude of works," and that if works of magnitude are to be accomplished in this kind, it must be done in his way. Again, he says, "discoveries are, as it were, new creations and imitations of God's works,

as well sang the poet :

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"To man's frail race great Athens long ago

First gave the seed whence waving harvests grow,

And re-created all our life below." 2

This same purpose is expressed, again, with a still more distinct and unmistakable reference to something of this kind, in that introduction or preface to the Fourth Part, which is styled the "Scaling Ladder of the Intellect, or Thread of the Labyrinth," in which he states that these "illustrative examples" (" exemplaria ") were to be "in the

1 Nov. Org., Works (Boston), I. 333; (Trans., VIII. 16. 159).

2 Works (Mont.), XIV. 426–7 (Philad. III. 519), trans. by F. W.; Works (Boston), V. 177-181.

8 Works (Boston), VIII. 161.

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