Such was the care with which it was composed, that Bacon transcribed it twelve times with his own hand.
It is divided into six parts. The first entitled Partitiones Scientiarum, or the divisions of knowledge possessed by mankind, in which the author has noted the deficiencies and imperfections of each. This he had already accomplished by his Advancement of Learning.
Part 2 is the Novum Organum Scientiarum, or new method of studying the sciences, a name probably suggested by Aristotle’s Organon (treatises on Logic). He intended it to be “the science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of things and of the true end of understanding.” This has been generally denominated the inductive method, i. e. the experimental method, from the principle of induction, or bringing together facts and drawing from them general principles or truths, by which the author proposes the advancement of all kinds of knowledge. In this consists preëminently the philosophy of