(b) His Latin works were to be fashioned into a vast scheme, which he called Instauratio Magna, expounding his philosophical theories. It was laid out on the following plan, but it was scarcely half finished:
(1) De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623). This treatise, in which the English work on the Advancement of Learning is embodied, gives a general summary of human knowledge, taking special notice of gaps and imperfections in science.
(2) Novum Organum (1620). This work explains the new logic, or inductive method of reasoning, upon which his philosophy is founded. Out of the nine sections into which he divides the subject the first only is handled with any fullness, the other eight being merely named.
(3) Sylva Sylvarum (left incomplete). This part was designed to give a complete view of what we call Natural Philosophy and Natural History. The subjects he has touched on under this head are four—the History of Winds, Life and Death, Density and Rarity, Sound and Hearing.
(4) Scala Intellectus. Of this we have only a few of the opening pages.
(5) Prodromi. A few fragments only were written.
(6) Philosophia Secunda. Never executed.
3. His Style. Of Bacon as a philosopher we can only say that he is one of the founders of modern systematic thought. His most important literary work is his Essays. In its three versions this work shows the development of Bacon’s English style. In the first edition the style is crisp, detached, and epigrammatic, conveying the impression that each essay has arisen from some happy thought or phrase, around which other pithy statements are agglomerated. In the later editions the ideas are expanded, the expression loses its spiky pointedness, and in the end we have an approach to a freer middle style, an approximation to the swinging manner of Dryden. Bacon had no ear for rhythm and melody; a born rhetorician, he preferred the sharper devices of antithesis and epigram; and he was always clear, orderly, and swiftly precise in his phrasing. Following the fashion of the time, he was free in his use of allusions, conceits, and Latin tags, creating rather a garish ornamental effect; but his style is saved from triviality by his breadth of intellect, by his luminous intensity of ideas, and by his cool man-of-the-world sagacity.
For the sake of comparison we quote the same extract from the first and third editions of the Essays. The second extract, it will be noticed, is a studied expansion of the first.
(1) Crafty men contemn them, simple men admire them, wise men use them; for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation. Read not to contradict nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read but cursorily, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.