Bacon states that "instruments and helps" are needed for both the hand and the understanding (Aphorism II). Describe what Bacon might consider "instruments of the mind." How do these mental tools "supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions"?

From the book

but proceed further to devise and supply more powerful aids for the use of the understanding; which I shall now subjoin. And assuredly in the Interpretation of Nature the mind should by all means be so prepared and disposed, that while it rests and finds footing in due stages and degrees of certainty, it may remember withal (especially at the beginning) that what it has before it depends in great measure upon what remains behind. XX. And yet since truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion, I think it expedient that the understanding should have permission, after the three…

ng will be in more readiness, and much more sure. Nor again do I mean to say that no improvement can be made upon these. On the contrary, I that regard the mind not only in its own faculties, but in its connection with things, must needs hold that the art of discovery may advance as discoveries advance.

f Forms. Instances therefore which are useful in this regard are of no despicable power, but have a certain prerogative. But great caution must here be employed, lest the human understanding, after having discovered many of those particular Forms and thereupon established partitions or divisions of the nature in question, be content to rest therein, and instead of proceeding to the legitimate discovery of the great Form, take it for granted that the nature from its very roots is manifold and divided, and so reject and put aside any further union of the nature, as a thing of superfluous…

← Preface Novum Organum by Francis Bacon , translated by James Spedding et al. Book I Book II → 191754 Novum Organum — Book I James Spedding et al. Francis Bacon —————————————————— APHORISMS CONCERNING THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE AND THE KINGDOM OF MAN. —————————————————— Aphorism I. [p. 47] Man, being 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. II. Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It…

and set down therein. It was necessary to handle them beforehand because I shall have to speak of them in what follows. But now I must proceed to the supports and rectifications of Induction, and then to concretes, and Latent Processes, and Latent Configurations, and the rest, as set forth in order in the twenty-first Aphorism; that at length (like an honest and faithful guardian) I may hand over to men their fortunes, now their understanding is emancipated and come as it were of age; whence there cannot but follow an improvement in man’s estate, and an enlargement of his power over nature.…