37. The second part of the Instauratio was to be, as he expresses it “the science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of things, and of the true aids of the understanding,” the new logic, or inductive method, in which what is eminently styled the Baconian philosophy consists. This, as far as he completed it, is known to all by the name of the Novum Organum. But he seems to have designed a fuller treatise in place of this; the aphorisms into which he has digested it being rather the heads or theses of chapters, at least in many places, that would have been further expanded.[188] And it is still more important to observe, that he did not achieve the whole of this summary that he had promised; but out of nine divisions of his method we only possess the first, which he denominates prærogative instantiarum. Eight others, of exceeding importance in logic, he has not touched at all, except to describe them by name and to promise more. “We will speak,” he says, “in the first place, of prerogative instances; secondly, of the aids of induction; thirdly, of the rectification of induction; fourthly, of varying the investigation according to the nature of the subject; fifthly, of prerogative natures (or objects), as to investigation, or the choice of what shall be first inquired into; sixthly, of the boundaries of inquiry, or the synoptical view of all natures in the world; seventhly, on the application of inquiry to practice, and what relates to man; eighthly, on the preparations (parascevis) for inquiry; lastly, on the ascending and descending scale of axioms.”[189] All these, after the first, are wanting, with the exception of some slightly handled in separate parts of Bacon’s writings; and the deficiency, which is so important, seems to have been sometimes overlooked by those who have written about the Novum Organum. [188] It is entitled by himself, Partis secundæ Summa, digesta in aphorismos. [189] Dicemus itaque primo loco de prærogativis instantiarum; secundo, de adminiculis inductiones; tertio, de rectificatione inductionis; quarto, de variatione inquisitionis pro natura subjecti; quinto, de prærogativis naturarum quatenus ad inquisitionem, sive de eo quod inquirendum est prius et posterius; sexto, de terminis inquisitionis, sive de synopsi omnium naturarum in universo; septimo, de deductione ad praxin, sive de eo quod est in ordine ad hominem; octavo, de parascevis ad inquisitionem; postremo autem, de scala ascensoria et descensoria axiomatum, lib. ii. 22. |Third part: Natural History.|