Bacon now withdrew permanently from public life, and devoted his splendid ability to literary and scientific work.  He completed the Essays, experimented largely, wrote history, scientific articles, and one scientific novel, and made additions to his Instauratio Magna, the great philosophical work which was never finished.  In the spring of 1626, while driving in a snowstorm, it occurred to him that snow might be used as a preservative instead of salt.  True to his own method of arriving at truth, he stopped at the first house, bought a fowl, and proceeded to test his theory.  The experiment chilled him, and he died soon after from the effects of his exposure.  As Macaulay wrote, “the great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to be its martyr.”

WORKS OF BACON.  Bacon’s philosophic works, The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum, will be best understood in connection with the Instauratio Magna, or The Great Institution of True Philosophy, of which they were parts.  The Instauratio was never completed, but the very idea of the work was magnificent,—­to sweep away the involved philosophy of the schoolmen and the educational systems of the universities, and to substitute a single great work which should be a complete education, “a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and for the relief of man’s estate.”  The object of this education was to bring practical results to all the people, instead of a little selfish culture and much useless speculation, which, he conceived, were the only products of the universities.

THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA.  This was the most ambitious, though it is not the best known, of Bacon’s works.  For the insight it gives us into the author’s mind, we note here a brief outline of his subject.  It was divided into six parts, as follows: 

1. Partitiones Scientiarum.  This was to be a classification and summary of all human knowledge.  Philosophy and all speculation must be cast out and the natural sciences established as the basis of all education.  The only part completed was The Advancement of Learning, which served as an introduction.

2. Novum Organum, or the “new instrument,” that is, the use of reason and experiment instead of the old Aristotelian logic.  To find truth one must do two things:  (a) get rid of all prejudices or idols, as Bacon called them.  These “idols” are four:  “idols of the tribe,” that is, prejudices due to common methods of thought among all races; “idols of the cave or den,” that is, personal peculiarities and prejudices; “idols of the market place,” due to errors of language; and “idols of the theater,” which are the unreliable traditions of men. (b) After discarding the above “idols” we must interrogate nature; must collect facts by means of numerous experiments, arrange them in order, and then determine the law that underlies them.

It will be seen at a glance that the above is the most important of Bacon’s works.  The Organum was to be in several books, only two of which he completed, and these he wrote and rewrote twelve times until they satisfied him.