70 Bacon 



But a just story of learning, containing the antiquities and 

 originals of knowledges and their sects, their inventions, 

 their traditions, their diverse administrations and manag- 

 ings, their flourishings, their oppositions, decays, depres 

 sions, oblivions, removes, with the causes and occasions of 

 them, and all other events concerning learning, throughout 

 the ages of the world, I may truly affirm to be wanting. 

 The use and end of which work I do not so much design for 

 curiosity or satisfaction of those that are the lovers of 

 learning, but chiefly for a more serious and grave purpose ; 

 which is this in few words, that it will make learned men 

 wise in the use and administration of learning. For it is 

 not St. Augustine s nor St. Ambrose s works that will make 

 so wise a divine, as ecclesiastical history, thoroughly read 

 and observed; and the same reason is of learning. 



History of nature is of three sorts ; of nature in course, of 

 nature erring or varying, and of nature altered or wrought; 

 that is, history of creatures, history of marvels, and history of 

 arts. The first of these, no doubt, is extant, and that in 

 good perfection ; the two latter are handled so weakly and 

 unprontably, as I am moved to note them as deficient. 

 For I find no sufficient or competent collection of the works 

 of nature which have a digression and deflection from the 

 ordinary course of generations, productions, and motions; 

 whether they be singularities of place and region, or the 

 strange events of time and chance, or the effects of yet 

 unknown properties, or the instances of exception to 

 general kinds. It is true, I find a number of books of 

 fabulous experiments and secrets, and frivolous impostures 

 for pleasure and strangeness ; but a substantial and severe 

 collection of the heteroclites or irregulars of nature, 1 well 

 examined and described, I find not : especially not with due 

 rejection of fables and popular errors : for as things now are, 

 if an untruth in nature be once on foot, what by reason of 

 the neglect of examination and countenance of antiquity, 

 and what by reason of the use of the opinion in similitudes 

 and ornaments of speech, it is never called down. 



The use of this work, honoured with a precedent in Aris- 

 tole, 2 is nothing less than to give contentment to the appe- 



1 Cf. Nov. Org. i. 45, and ii. 28. These &quot; instances of exception to 

 general kinds &quot; he there terms instantice monodicce, quas etiam 

 trregulares five heteroclitas appellare consuevimus. 



2 DP. Mir is Ausciiltationibus; (dav/md(na dKoi cr^ioTa) , see p. 3- 



