Francis Bacon, however, went beyond all his predecessors in furnishing an elaborate Method for the interpretation of Nature. When he protested against the intellect's being left to itself (_intellectus sibi permissus_), he meant more than speculation left unchecked by study of the facts. He meant also that the interpreter must have a method. As man, he says, cannot move rocks by the mere strength of his hands without instruments, so he cannot penetrate to the secrets of Nature by mere strength of his intellect without instruments. These instruments he undertakes to provide in his Inductive Method or _Novum Organum_. And it is important to understand precisely what his methods were, because it is on the ground of them that he is called the founder of Inductive Philosophy, and because this has created a misapprehension of the methods actually followed by men of science. Ingenious, penetrating, wide-ranging, happy in nomenclature, the _Novum Organum_ is a wonderful monument of the author's subtle wit and restless energy; but, beyond giving a general impulse to testing speculative fancies by close comparison with facts, it did nothing for science. His method--with its Tables of Preliminary Muster for the Intellect (_tabulae comparentiae primae instantiarum ad intellectum_, facts collected and methodically arranged for the intellect to work upon); its Elimination upon first inspection of obviously accidental concomitants (_Rejectio sive Exclusiva naturarum_); its Provisional Hypothesis (_Vindemiatio Prima sive Interpretatio Inchoata_); its advance to a true Induction or final Interpretation by examination of special instances (he enumerates twenty-seven, 3 x 3 x 3, _Prerogativas Instantiarum_, trying to show the special value of each for the inquirer)[2]--was beautifully regular and imposing, but it was only a vain show of a method. It was rendered so chiefly by the end or aim that Bacon proposed for the inquirer. In this he was not in advance of his age; on the contrary, he was probably behind Roger Bacon, and certainly far behind such patient and concentrated thinkers as Copernicus, Gilbert, and Galileo--no discredit to the grandeur of his intellect when we remember that science was only his recreation, the indulgence of his leisure from Law and State. In effect, his method came to this. Collect as many instances as you can of the effect to be investigated, and the absence of it where you would expect it, arrange them methodically, then put aside guesses at the cause which are obviously unsuitable, then draw up a probably explanation, then proceed to make this exact by further comparison with instances. It is when we consider what he directed the inquirer to search for that we see why so orderly a method was little likely to be fruitful.