.'" But the
first public step in the opening of his great design was the publication
in the autumn of 1605 of the _Advancement of Learning_, a careful and
balanced report on the existing stock and deficiencies of human
knowledge. His endeavours, as he says in the _Advancement_ itself, are
"but as an image in a cross-way, that may point out the way, but cannot
go it." But from this image of his purpose, his thoughts greatly widened
as time went on. The _Advancement_, in part at least, was probably a
hurried work. It shadowed out, but only shadowed out, the lines of his
proposed reform of philosophical thought; it showed his dissatisfaction
with much that was held to be sound and complete, and showed the
direction of his ideas and hopes. But it was many years before he took a
further step. Active life intervened. In 1620, at the height of his
prosperity, on the eve of his fall, he published the long meditated
_Novum Organum_, the avowed challenge to the old philosophies, the
engine and instrument of thought and discovery which was to put to shame
and supersede all others, containing, in part at least, the principles
of that new method of the use of experience which was to be the key to
the interpretation and command of nature, and, together with the method,
an elaborate but incomplete exemplification of its leading processes.
Here were summed up, and stated with the most solemn earnestness, the
conclusions to which long study and continual familiarity with the
matters in question had led him. And with the _Novum Organum_ was at
length disclosed, though only in outline, the whole of the vast scheme
in all its parts, object, method, materials, results, for the
"Instauration" of human knowledge, the restoration of powers lost,
disused, neglected, latent, but recoverable by honesty, patience,
courage, and industry.

The _Instauratio_, as he planned the work, "is to be divided," says
Mr. Ellis, "into six portions, of which the _first_ is to contain a
general survey of the present state of knowledge. In the _second_,
men are to be taught how to use their understanding aright in the
investigation of nature. In the _third_, all the phenomena of the
universe are to be stored up as in a treasure-house, as the
materials on which the new method is to be employed. In the
_fourth_, examples are to be given of its operation and of the
results to which it leads. The _fifth_ is to contain what