“His peculiar system of philosophy,” says Mr. Spedding in another preface, “that is to say, the peculiar method of investigation, the “organum,” the “formula,” the “clavis,” the “ars ipsa interpretandi naturam,” the “filum Labyrinthi,” or by whatever of its many names we choose to call that artificial process by which alone he believed man could attain a knowledge of the laws and a command over the powers of nature—­of this philosophy we can make nothing.  If we have not tried it, it is because we feel confident that it would not answer.  We regard it as a curious piece of machinery, very subtle, elaborate, and ingenious, but not worth constructing, because all the work it could do may be done more easily another way.”—­Works, iii. 171.

What his method really was is itself a matter of question.  Mr. Ellis speaks of it as a matter “but imperfectly apprehended.”  He differs from his fellow-labourer Mr. Spedding, in what he supposes to be its central and characteristic innovation.  Mr. Ellis finds it in an improvement and perfection of logical machinery.  Mr. Spedding finds it in the formation of a great “natural and experimental history,” a vast collection of facts in every department of nature, which was to be a more important part of his philosophy than the Novum Organum itself.  Both of them think that as he went on, the difficulties of the work grew upon him, and caused alterations in his plans, and we are reminded that “there is no didactic exposition of his method in the whole of his writings,” and that “this has not been sufficiently remarked by those who have spoken of his philosophy.”

In the first place, the kind of intellectual instrument which he proposed to construct was a mistake.  His great object was to place the human mind “on a level with things and nature” (ut faciamus intellectum humanum rebus et naturae parem), and this could only be done by a revolution in methods.  The ancients had all that genius could do for man; but it was a matter, he said, not of the strength and fleetness of the running, but of the rightness of the way.  It was a new method, absolutely different from anything known, which he proposed to the world, and which should lead men to knowledge, with the certainty and with the impartial facility of a high-road.  The Induction which he imagined to himself as the contrast to all that had yet been tried was to have two qualities.  It was to end, by no very prolonged or difficult processes, in absolute certainty.  And next, it was to leave very little to the differences of intellectual power:  it was to level minds and capacities.  It was to give all men the same sort of power which a pair of compasses gives the hand in drawing a circle. “Absolute certainty, and a mechanical mode of procedure” says Mr. Ellis, “such that all men should be capable of employing it, are the two great features of the Baconian system.”  This he thought possible,