Bacon had
accomplished in natural philosophy _without_ the aid of his own
method, _ex eodem intellectus usu quem alii in inquirendo et
inveniendo adhibere consueverunt_. It is therefore less important
than the rest, and Bacon declares that he will not bind himself to
the conclusions which it contains. Moreover, its value will
altogether cease when the _sixth_ part can be completed, wherein
will be set forth the new philosophy--the results of the
application of the new method to all the phenomena of the universe.
But to complete this, the last part of the _Instauratio_, Bacon
does not hope; he speaks of it as a thing, _et supra vires et ultra
spes nostras collocata_."--_Works_, i. 71.

The _Novum Organum_, itself imperfect, was the crown of all that he
lived to do. It was followed (1622) by the publication, intended to be
periodical, of materials for the new philosophy to work upon, particular
sections and classes of observations on phenomena--the _History of the
Winds_, the _History of Life and Death_. Others were partly prepared but
not published by him. And finally, in 1623, he brought out in Latin a
greatly enlarged recasting of the _Advancement_; the nine books of the
"_De Augmentis_." But the great scheme was not completed; portions were
left more or less finished. Much that he purposed was left undone, and
could not have been yet done at that time.

But the works which he published represent imperfectly the labour spent
on the undertaking. Besides these there remains a vast amount of unused
or rejected work, which shows how it was thought out, rearranged, tried
first in one fashion and then in another, recast, developed. Separate
chapters, introductions, "experimental essays and discarded beginnings,"
treatises with picturesque and imaginative titles, succeeded one another
in that busy work-shop; and these first drafts and tentative essays have
in them some of the freshest and most felicitous forms of his thoughts.
At one time his enterprise, connecting itself with his own life and
mission, rose before his imagination and kindled his feelings, and
embodied itself in the lofty and stately "Proem" already quoted. His
quick and brilliant imagination saw shadows and figures of his ideas in
the ancient mythology, which he worked out with curious ingenuity and
often much poetry in his _Wisdom of the Ancients_. Towards the end of
his life he began to embody his thou