this system in his own mind.  And it is a curious and interesting fact, and one illustrative, at least, of the imperfection of Bacon’s exposition of his own method, that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Spedding, the two most conscientious investigators of Bacon’s thought, should have arrived at different conclusions in regard to the distinctive peculiarities of the Baconian philosophy.  Mr. Spedding, in his very interesting preface to the “Parasceve,” suggests, since his own and Mr. Ellis’s conclusions, though different, do not appear irreconcilable, “whether there be not room for a third solution, more complete than either, as including both.”  Both he and Mr. Ellis set out from the position, that “the philosophy which Bacon meant to announce was in some way essentially different, not only from any that had been before, but from any that has been since,”—­a position very much opposed to the popular opinion.  “The triumph of his [Bacon’s] principles of scientific investigation,” said, not long since, a writer in the “Quarterly Review,” whose words may be taken as representative of the common ideas on the matter, “has made it unnecessary to revert to the reasoning by which they were established."[B] But the truth seems to be, that the merits of Bacon belong, as Mr. Ellis well says, “to the spirit rather than to the positive precepts of his philosophy.”  Nor does it appear that Bacon himself, although he indulged the highest hopes and felt the securest confidence in the results of his perfected system, supposed that he had given to it that perfection which was required.  In the “De Augmentis Scientiarum,” published in 1623, two years and a half before his death, he says:  “I am preparing and laboring with all my might to make the mind of man, by help of art, a match for the nature of things, (ut mens per artem fiat rebus par,) to discover an art of Indication and Direction, whereby all other arts, with their axioms and works, may be detected and brought to light.  For I have, with good reason, set this down as wanting.” (Lib. v. c. 2.) Bacon regarded his method, not only as one wholly new, but also of universal application, and leading to absolute certainty.  Doubt was to be excluded from its results.  By its means, all the knowledge of which men were capable was to be attained surely and in a comparatively brief space of time.  Such a conviction, extravagant as it may seem, is expressed in many passages.  In the Preface to his “Parasceve,” published in 1620, in the same volume with the “Novum Organum,” he says, that he is about to describe a Natural and Experimental History, which, if it be once provided, (and he assumes, that, “etiam vivis nobis,” it may be provided,) “paucorum annorum opus futuram esse inquitionem naturae et scientiarum omnium.”  Again, in the Protemium of the “Novum Organum”:  “There was but one course left, to commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations.”  And in the Dedication to the same work, he says, with characteristic confidence, “Equidem Organum praebui,”—­“I have provided the Instrument.”