MAGNALIA NATURÆ, PRÆCIPUE QUOAD USUS HUMANOS.' THE prolongation of life. The restitution of youth in some degree. The curing of diseases counted incurable. More easy and less loathsome purgings. The increasing of strength and activity. The increasing of ability to suffer torture or pain. The altering of complexions, and fatness and leanness. The altering of statures. The altering of features. The increasing and exalting of the intellectual parts. Versions of bodies into other bodies. Making of new species. Transplanting of one species into another. Instruments of destruction, as of war and poison. Exhilaration of the spirits, and putting them in good disposition. Force of the imagination, either upon another body, or upon the body itself. Acceleration of time in maturations. Acceleration of time in clarifications. volume. This paper follows the New Atlantis in the original edition, and concludes the Acceleration of putrefaction. Acceleration of decoction. Acceleration of germination. Making rich composts for the earth. Impressions of the air, and raising of tempests. Great alteration; as in induration, emollition, &c. Turning crude and watry substances into oily and unctuous substances. Drawing of new foods out of substances not now in use. Making new threads for apparel; and new stuffs; such as paper, glass, &c. Natural divinations. Deceptions of the senses. Greater pleasures of the senses. Artificial minerals and cements. PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. PART III. WORKS ORIGINALLY DESIGNED FOR PARTS OF THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA, BUT SUPERSEDED OR ABANDONED; ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY WERE WRITTEN. "Because you were wont to make me believe you took liking to my writings, I send you some of this vacation's fruits; and thus much more of my mind and purpose. I hasten not to publish : perishing I would prevent; and am forced to respect as well my times as the matter. For with me it is thus, and I think with all men in my case: if I bind myself to an argument, it loadeth my mind, but if I rid myself of the present cogitation, it is rather a recreation. This hath put me into these miscellanies, which I purpose to suppress it God give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of Philosophy, which I go on with, though slowly."- Letter to Bishop Andrews upon sending him the "Cogitata et Visa." PREFACE. We have now collected all of Bacon's philosophical works which there is reason to believe he would himself have cared to preserve. The rest contain but little matter of which the substance may not be found in one part or another of the preceding volumes, reduced to the shape in which he thought it would be most effective. In his eyes, those which follow belonged to the part of the race which was past and was not to be looked back upon; for the end which he was pursuing lay still far before him, and his great anxiety was to bequeath the pursuit to a second generation, which should start fresh from the point where he was obliged to leave it. - It is not so however with us. In our eyes the interest which attaches to his labours is of a different kind. We no longer look for the discovery of any great treasure by following in that direction. His peculiar system of philosophy, 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 whichever of its many names we choose to call that artificial process by which alone he believed that 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. But though this, the favourite child of Bacon's genius which he would fain have made heir of all he had, died thus in the cradle, his genius itself still lives and works among us; whatever brings us into nearer communion with that is still interesting, and it is as a product and exponent of Bacon's own mind and character that the Baconian philosophy, properly so called, retains its chief value for |