104 Bacon 



trality, it cannot but seem a matter of great profit, to see 

 before them the several opinions touching the foundations 

 of nature : not for any exact truth that can be expected in 

 those theories; for as the same phenomena in astronomy 

 are satisfied by the received astronomy of the diurnal 

 motion, and the proper motions of the planets, with their 

 eccentrics and epicycles, and likewise by the theory of 

 Copernicus, 1 who supposed the earth to move (and the 

 calculations are indifferently agreeable to both), so the 

 ordinary face and view of experience is many times satisfied 

 by several theories and philosophies; whereas to find the 

 real truth requireth another manner of severity and atten 

 tion. For as Aristotle saith, 2 that children at the first will 

 call every woman mother, but afterward they come to 

 distinguish according to truth, so experience, if it be in 

 childhood, will call every philosophy mother, but when it 

 cometh to ripeness, it will discern the true mother. So as 

 in the meantime it is good to see the several glosses and 

 opinions upon nature, whereof, it may be, every one in some 

 one point hath seen clearer than his fellows: therefore I 

 with some collection to be made, painfully and under- 

 standingly, de antiquis philosophiis, out of all the possible 

 light which remaineth to us of them: which kind of work 

 I find deficient. But here I must give warning, that it be 

 done distinctly and severally ; 3 the philosophies of every one 

 throughout by themselves; and not by titles packed and 

 fagotted up together, as hath been done by Plutarch. For 

 it is the harmony of a philosophy in itself which giveth it 

 light and credence; whereas if it be singled and broken, it 

 will seem more foreign and dissonant. For as when I read 

 in Tacitus the actions of Nero, or Claudius, with circum 

 stances of times, inducements, and occasions, I find them 

 not so strange; but when I read them in Suetonius Tran- 

 quillus, gathered into titles and bundles, and not in order of 



adds that the practice was established as a fundamental State Law 

 by Mahomet II. 



1 Nov. Org. i. 45, where he calls these &quot; eccentrics and epicycles,&quot; 

 linecB spirales et dracones. Bacon was ignorant of, and incurious 

 about Mathematics and Astronomy at this time; and shows no 

 good will towards Galileo and the &quot; Copernican theory.&quot; 



2 Aristot. Phys. i. i . 



3 Editions 1605, 1633, read severely; but the Latin has distincto 

 which seems to require severally. 



