benefit of man; to warn them against the rocks and shallows of error and fallacy which beset the course and inquiry, and to elevate the quest of truth, and the acquisition of wisdom into the noblest aim and best assured hope of the human species." NOVUM ORGANUM Instauratio Magna, Part II When this work was first published in 1620, though well received by many, it did not meet with entire approval. The King just then was not in a very favourable frame of mind towards Bacon, and his opinion of the book was embraced in the remark that "it was like the peace of God, it passed all understanding." Neither was Coke's judgment of a flattering character; for he takes the opportunity of snubbing the author, as he wittily plays on the frontispiece of his ex auctore copy, and Brant's allegorical ship, by writing between the pillars of Hercules these lines: "It deserveth not to be read in Schools But to be freighted in the Ship of Fools." It appeared in folio, with an engraved title by Pass, and contained a preface and dedication to James the First. Interesting portions of the work had been submitted to several of his friends, including Sir Thomas Bodley and Bishop Andrews, the best known and most esteemed treatise being the Cogitata et Visa. This was written in 1608, and may be considered as the origin and foundation of the Novum Organum. From Bodley's words that the book "showed him a master-workman,” it is evident that it was highly appreciated, and the further eulogium was added: "That it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of learning and with worthy contemplations of the means to procure it." The Cogitata was written in Latin, and was, in reality, the completed form of a tract which he had previously compiled in English but never finished, called the Clue of the Labyrinth (Filum Labyrinthi). The work in its finished state was aphoristic in style, and carried great weight on account of its directness of thought. It was not actually published until the year 1653, when Grüter included it in his little volume of that year, (which will be further noticed in the" posthumous works"), and an interesting allusion to this publication, and also to that of the De Augmentis, issued at Leyden in 1645 by the same author, may be found in Mr. Edwin Reed's work on Francis Bacon our Shakespeare (1902). The Novum Organum was written in Latin, and although portions of it were translated into English at various times-by Watts in 1640, also in the Resuscitatio (1671 edition), etc.-a complete translation did not appear till the year 1733; this was made by Dr. Peter Shaw. It was divided into two books, and annexed to those was the Parasceue, which is considered the beginning of the third part of the Instauratio, the Natural History proper, and which the author calls "Parasceue ad historiam Naturalem et experimentalem," together with a Catalogus historiarum particularium secundem capita. |