122 Bacon 



nature of men s appetite to this food, most men are of the 

 taste and stomach of the Israelites in the desert, that would 

 fain have returned ad olios carnium, 1 and were weary of 

 manna; which, though it were celestial, yet seemed less 

 nutritive and comfortable. So generally men taste well 

 knowledges that are drenched in flesh and blood, civil 

 history, morality, policy, about the which men s affections, 

 praises, fortunes do turn and are conversant ; but this same 

 lumen siccum doth parch and offend most men s watery and 

 soft natures. But to speak truly of things as they are in 

 worth, Rational Knowledges are the keys of all other arts, 

 for as Aristotle saith, aptly and elegantly, That the hand is 

 the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of 

 forms: 2 so these be truly said to be the art of arts : neither 

 do they only direct, but likewise confirm and strengthen: 

 even as the habit of shooting doth not only enable to shoot 

 a nearer shoot, but also to draw a stronger bow. 



The Arts intellectual are four in number; divided accord 

 ing to the ends whereunto they are referred: for man s 

 labour is to invent that which is sought or propounded ; or 

 to judge that which is invented; or to retain that which is 

 judged ; or to deliver over that which is retained. So as the 

 arts must be four: Art of Inquiry or Invention: Art of 

 Examination or Judgment : Art of Custody or Memory : and 

 Art of Elocution or Tradition. 



Invention is of two kinds, much differing : the one of Arts 

 and Sciences ; and the other of Speech and Arguments. 

 The former of these I do report deficient; which seemeth 

 to me to be such a deficience as if in the making of an 

 inventory touching the estate of a defunct it should be set 

 down that there is no ready money. For as money will fetch 

 all other commodities, so this knowledge is that which 

 should purchase all the rest. And like as the West Indies 

 had never been discovered if the use of the mariner s needle 

 had not been first discovered, though the one be vast 

 regions, and the other a small motion; so it cannot be 

 found strange if sciences be no farther discovered, if the 

 art itself of invention and discovery hath been passed over. 



ratio contemplatioque naturae. Or perhaps, De Senect. 14. Si habet 

 aliquid tanquam pabulum studii atque doctrine, nihil est otiosa 

 senectute jucundius. 



1 Numb. xi. 4-6. a Aristot. De Anima, iii. 8. 



