ABSTRACT
(1) Our knowledge of Bacon's method is much less complete than it is commonly supposed to be. Of the Novum Organum, which was to contain a complete statement of its nature and principles, we have only the first two books; and although in other parts of Bacon's writings, as for instance in the Cogitata et Visa de Interpretations Naturæ, many of the ideas contained in these books recur in a less systematic form, we yet meet with but few indications of the nature of the subjects which were to have been discussed in the others. It seems not improbable that some parts of Bacon's system were never perfectly developed even in his own mind. However this may be, it is certain that an attempt to determine what his method, taken as a whole, was or would have been, must necessarily involve a conjectural or hypothetical element; and it is, I think, chiefly because this circumstance has not been sufficiently recognized, that the idea of Bacon's philosophy has generally speaking been but imperfectly apprehended.
