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Valerius Terminus: Of The Interpretation Of Nature
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6. Part of a chapter, not numbered, “Of the internal and profound errors and superstitions in the nature of the mind, and of the four sorts of Idols or fictions which offer themselves to the understanding in the inquisition of knowledge.”
7. “Of the impediments of knowledge; being the third chapter, the preface only of it.”
8. “Of the impediments which have been in the times and in diversion of wits; being the fourth chapter.”
9. “Of the impediments of knowledge for want of a true succession of wits, and that hitherto the length of one man’s life hath been the greatest measure of knowledge; being the fifth chapter.”
10. “That the pretended succession of wits hath been evil placed, forasmuch as after variety of sects and opinions the most popular and not the truest prevaileth and weareth out the rest; being the sixth chapter.”
11. “Of the impediments of knowledge in handling it by parts, and in slipping off particular sciences from the root and stock of universal knowledge; being the seventh chapter.”
12. “That the end and scope of knowledge hath been generally mistaken, and that men were never well advised what it was they sought” (part of a chapter not numbered).
13. “An abridgment of divers chapters of the first book;” namely, the l2th, 13th, and 14th, (over which is a running title “Of active knowledge;”) and (without any running title) the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th], 19th, 21st, 22nd, 25th, and 26th. These abridgments have no headings; and at the end is written, “The end of the Abridgment of the first book of the Interpretation of Nature.”
Such was the arrangement of the manuscript as the transcriber left it; which I have thought worth preserving, because I seem to see traces in it of two separate stages in the developement of the work; the order of the chapters as they are transcribed being probably the same in which Bacon wrote them; and the numbers inserted at the end of the headings indicating the order in which, when he placed them in the transcriber’s hands, it was his intention to arrange them; and because it proves at any rate that at that time the design of the whole book was clearly laid out in his mind.
There is nothing, unfortunately, to fix the DATE of the transcript, unless it be implied in certain astronomical or astrological symbols written on the blank outside of the volume; in which the figures 1603 occur. This may possibly be the transcriber’s note of the time when he finished his work; for which (but for one circumstance which I shall mention presently) I should think the year 1603 is likely a date as any; for we know from a letter of Bacon’s, dated 3rd July 1603, that he had at that time resolved “to meddle as little as possible in the King’s causes,” and to “put his ambition wholly upon his pen;” and we know from the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING that in 1605 he was engaged upon a work entitled “The Interpretation of Nature:” to which I may add that there is in the Lambeth Library a copy of a letter from Bacon to Lord Kinlosse, dated 25th March, 1603, and written in the same hand as this manuscript.
Bacon’s corrections, if I may judge from the character of the handwriting, were inserted a little later; for it is a fact that about the beginning of James’s reign his writing underwent a remarkable change, from the hurried Saxon hand full of large sweeping curves and with letters imperfectly formed and connected, which he wrote in Elizabeth’s time, to a small, neat, light, and compact one, formed more upon the Italian model which was then coming into fashion; and when these corrections were made it is evident that this new character had become natural to him and easy. It is of course impossible to fix the precise date of such a change,–the more so because his autographs of this period are very scarce,–but whenever it was that he corrected this manuscript, it is evident that he then considered it worthy of careful revision. He has not merely inserted a sentence here and there, altered the numbers of the chapters, and added words to the headings in order to make the description more exact; but he has taken the trouble to add the running title wherever it was wanting, thus writing the words “of the Interpretation of Nature” at full lengths not less than eighteen times over; and upon the blank space of the titlepage he has written out a complete table of contents. In short, if he had been preparing the manuscript for the press or for a fresh transcript, he could not have done it more completely or carefully,–only that he has given no directions for altering the order of the chapters so as to make it correspond with the numbers. And hence I infer that up to the time when he made these corrections, this was the form of the great work on which he was engaged: it was a work concerning the Interpretation of Nature; which was to begin where the NOVUM ORGANUM begins; and of which the first book was to include all the preliminary considerations preparatory to the exposition of the formula.