Advancement of Learning 103 



that which is not fully appearing is not collected into asser 

 tion, whereby error might draw error, but reserved in doubt : 

 the other, that the entry of doubts are as so many suckers 

 or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that 

 which, if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have 

 advised, but passed it over without note, by the suggestion 

 and solicitation of doubts, is made to be attended and 

 applied. But both these commodities do scarcely counter 

 vail an inconvenience which will intrude itself, if it be not 

 debarred; which is, that when a doubt is once received, 

 men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to 

 solve it; and accordingly bend their wits. Of this we see 

 the familiar example in lawyers and scholars, both which, 

 if they have once admitted a doubt, it goeth ever after 

 authorised for a doubt. But that use of wit and knowledge 

 is to be allowed, which laboureth to make doubtful things 

 certain, and not those which labour to make certain things 

 doubtful. Therefore these kalendars of doubts I commend 

 as excellent things ; so that there be this caution used, that 

 when they be thoroughly sifted and brought to resolution, 

 they be from thenceforth omitted, decarded, and not con 

 tinued to cherish and encourage men in doubting. To 

 which kalendar of doubts or problems, I advise be annexed 

 another kalendar, as much or more material, which is a 

 Kalendar of popular errors: I mean chiefly in natural 

 history, such as pass in speech and conceit, and are never 

 theless apparently detected and convicted of untruth: 

 that man s knowledge be not weakened nor embased by 

 such dross and vanity. 



As for the doubts or non liquets general, or in total, I 

 understand those differences of opinions touching the prin 

 ciples of nature, and the fundamental points of the same, 

 which have caused the diversity of sects, schools, and 

 philosophies, as that of Empedocles, Pythagoras, Demo- 

 critus, Parmenides, and the rest. For although Aristotle, 

 as though he had been of the race of the Ottomans, thought 

 he could not reign except the first thing he did he killed all 

 his brethren ; 1 yet to those that seek Truth and not magis- 



1 See Ellis note on De Augm. iii. 4, where he suggests, most prob 

 ably, that Bacon is alluding to the acts of Mahomet III. who, on 

 becoming Sultan in A.D. 1595, put to death nineteen brothers, and 

 ten or twelve women, supposed to be with child by his father. He 



