tions to the text, for Pars Prima, are however of real value. While vol. III (Bridges) suggests that it is not complete (see pp. 177 and 179, “preface to this volume”), I am informed that the late editor left no further materials.
The method followed has been simple, but it has been sought to make it painstaking. Certain definite questions were put to my Author, and the answers sought in his own words; attention has been confined to a critical examination of his own works, and the literature on Bacon has been little taken into account. The method of collation of parallel passages has been employed to the utmost possible limit. Accordingly, as an instrument for automatic control, an Index Rerum was composed, comprising something over two hundred concepts, and containing upward of seven thousand references. With this my Author’s treatment-in-chief was compared with all other relevant passages, to establish consistency or reveal inconsistency of conception. Where the latter appeared, it was sought to indicate a reconciliation, if possible, and that failing to seek the cause or the motive for the inconsistency. Pains have been taken throughout to say nothing which cannot be established by definite citation. And, further, it has been taken to be of essential importance not only to answer a given question clearly, but just as clearly to indicate my failure to do so.
The limitations of my work are expressed in the title selected, which it will be observed is fairly broad. Under Theory of Mind is included Psychology and Epistemology; under Psychology, both the physiological and the analytical; under Epistemology, both Theory of Perception and Theory of Knowledge, with the implied Criteriology. In Chapters II and III is to be found Bacon’s Psychology; thus, the distinction between vegetative, sensitive and rational souls, their origins, their relations to each other, and the faculties and physiological basis of the sensitive soul, on the one hand: and an examination of the rational soul in and for itself, with reference to form and matter, and in relation to its sources of knowledge, with reference to the “intellectus agens” problem, on the other hand. In Chapter IV is to be found our Philosopher’s Epistemology and Criteriology; thus, first his notion of the Perception of the External World, where the process of Perception, its analysis into Sensation, Association—and here his notion of the Universal—and Inference, and true as opposed to erroneous Perception, are considered: then, second, his notion of the part played by the Understanding in the winning of our Knowledge, where his conception of Proof in general and in particular is examined, to make clear how far a Criterion is given. Chapter I contains, as a necessary introduction, a critical presentation of his Theory of Species,
