uge congeries of
phenomena, the manifestations of some simple and primitive qualities, which
were hid from us by the complexity of the things themselves. The world was
a vast labyrinth, amid the windings of which we require some clue or thread
whereby we may track our way to knowledge and thence to power. This thread,
the _filum labyrinthi_, is the new method of _induction_. But, as has been
frequently pointed out, the new method could not be applied until facts had
been observed and collected. This is an indispensable preliminary. "Man,
the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so much, and
so much only, as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of
nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything." The
proposition that our knowledge of nature necessarily begins with
observation and experience, is common to Bacon and many contemporary
reformers of science, but he laid peculiar stress upon it, and gave it a
new meaning. What he really meant by observation was a competent natural
history or collection of facts. "The firm foundations of a purer natural
philosophy are laid in natural history."[75] "First of all we must prepare
a _natural and experimental history_, sufficient and good; and this is the
foundation of all."[76] The senses and the memory, which collect and store
up facts, must be assisted; there must be a _ministration_ of the senses
and another of the memory. For not only are instances required, but these
must be arranged in such a manner as not to distract or confuse the mind,
_i.e._ tables and arrangements of instances must be constructed. In the
preliminary collection the greatest care must be taken that the mind be
absolutely free from preconceived ideas; nature is only to be conquered by
obedience; man must be merely receptive. "All depends on keeping the eye
steadily fixed upon the facts of nature, and so receiving their images
simply as they are; for God forbid that we should give out a dream of our
own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may He graciously grant
to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator
imprinted on his creatures."[77] Concealed among the facts presented to
sense are the causes or forms, and the problem therefore is so to analyse
experience[78], so to break it up into pieces, that we shall with certainty
and mechanical ease arrive at a true conclusion. This process, which forms
the essence of the n