possess were published in the following
reign. The "Cogitata et Visa" was a first sketch of the "Novum Organum,"
which in its complete form was presented to James in 1621. A year later
Bacon produced his "Natural and Experimental History." This, with the
"Novum Organum" and the "Advancement of Learning," was all of his
projected "Instauratio Magna" which he actually finished; and even of
this portion we have only part of the last two divisions. The "Ladder of
the Understanding," which was to have followed these and led up from
experience to science, the "Anticipations," or provisional hypotheses
for the enquiries of the new philosophy, and the closing account of
"Science in Practice" were left for posterity to bring to completion.
"We may, as we trust," said Bacon, "make no despicable beginnings. The
destinies of the human race must complete it, in such a manner perhaps
as men looking only at the present world would not readily conceive.
For upon this will depend, not only a speculative good, but all the
fortunes of mankind, and all their power."

When we turn from words like these to the actual work which Bacon did,
it is hard not to feel a certain disappointment. He did not thoroughly
understand the older philosophy which he attacked. His revolt from the
waste of human intelligence which he conceived to be owing to the
adoption of a false method of investigation blinded him to the real
value of deduction as an instrument of discovery; and he was encouraged
in his contempt for it as much by his own ignorance of mathematics as by
the non-existence in his day of the great deductive sciences of physics
and astronomy. Nor had he a more accurate prevision of the method of
modern science. The inductive process to which he exclusively directed
men's attention bore no fruit in Bacon's hands. The "art of
investigating nature" on which he prided himself has proved useless for
scientific purposes, and would be rejected by modern investigators.
Where he was on a more correct track he can hardly be regarded as
original. "It may be doubted," says Dugald Stewart, "whether any one
important rule with regard to the true method of investigation be
contained in his works of which no hint can be traced in those of his
predecessors." Not only indeed did Bacon fail to anticipate the methods
of modern science, but he even rejected the great scientific
discoveries of his own day. He set aside with the same scorn the
astronomical theory of Co