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A new and important step on the part of the government had now placed him in an attitude of almost avowed rebellion. All functionaries, from governors of provinces down to subalterns in the army, were required to take a new oath of allegiance, "novum et hactenua inusitatum religionia juramentum," as the Prince characterized it, which was, he said, quite equal to the inquisition.
It is the novum organum that this one is bringing up, in all its finish, for the assault of that particular quarter. Hard as that old wall is, great as the faculty of conservation is in these old structures that hold by time, there is one element running all through it, these chemists find, which is within their power, namely, the resolution of particular persons.
He now reverted to the form of the aphorism, and resolved to throw the materials of the Cogitata et Visa into this shape. The result is the Novum Organum. It contains, with large additions, the substance of the treatise, but broken up and rearranged in the new form of separate impersonal generalised observations.
It is that same combination of human faculties, that same combination of sense and reason, which the Novum Organum provides for; it is that same scorn of abstract wordy speculation, on the one hand, and blind experimental groping, on the other, that is everywhere suggested here.
And, in fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other continual disappointment, and unceasing molestation. That this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that "baseless fabric of a vision."
'Let none even doubt, says the author of the Novum Organum, who thought it wisest to steer clear even of doubt on such a point, 'whether we are anxious to destroy and demolish the philosophical arts and sciences which are now in use.
That some sparks of the old fire were not wanting, however, that the nation which had kept alive in the common mind through so many generations, without the aid of books, the memory of that 'ancestor' that 'made its laws, was not after all, perhaps, without a future began to be evident about the time that the history of 'that last king of England who was the ancestor' of the English Stuart, was dedicated by the author of the Novum Organum to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I., not without a glance at these portents.
Without any disparagement to the admirable treatise De Augmentis, we must say that, in our judgment, Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the Novum Organum. All the peculiarities of his extraordinary mind are found there in the highest perfection.
'For, says the great Innovator of the Modern Ages, the author of the Novum Organum, and of the Advancement of Learning, in claiming this department of Letters as the necessary and proper instrumentality of a new science, of a science at least, 'foreign to opinions received, as he claims elsewhere that it is, under all conditions, the inevitable essential form of this science in particular.
So that the Novum Organum presents itself to us, in these passages, only as a preparation and arming of the mind for a closer dealing with the nature of things, in particular instances, which are not there instanced, for those more critical 'WRESTLING INSTANCES' which the scientific re-constructions, according to true definitions, in the higher departments of human want will constitute, those wrestling instances, which will naturally arise whenever the philosophy which concerns itself experimentally with the question of the predominance of powers the philosophy which includes in its programme the practical application of the principles of revolution and abhorrence of change, in 'greater congregations' and 'extensive wholes, as well as the principles of motion in 'particular forms' shall come to be applied to its nobler, to its noblest subjects.
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