26 NOVUM OROANUM 



and not be anxious to discover them in subordinate 

 objects. 



XLIX. The human understanding resembles not a dry 

 light, but admits a tincture of the will 16 and passions, which 

 generate their own system accordingly; for man always be 

 lieves more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, 

 rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation; 

 sobriety, because it limits his hope; the depths of nature, 

 from superstition; the light of experiment, from arrogance 

 and pride, lest his mind should appear to be occupied with 

 common and varying objects; paradoxes, from a fear of the 

 opinion of the vulgar; in short, his feelings imbue and 

 corrupt his understanding in innumerable and sometimes 

 imperceptible ways. 



L. But by far the greatest impediment and aberration 

 of the human understanding proceeds from the dulness, 

 incompetence, and errors of the senses; since whatever 

 strikes the senses preponderates over everything, however 

 superior, which does not immediately strike them. Hence 

 contemplation mostly ceases with sight, and a very scanty, 

 or perhaps no regard is paid to invisible objects. The entire 

 operation, therefore, of spirits inclosed in tangible bodies&quot; 

 is concealed, and escapes us. All that more delicate change 

 of formation in the parts of coarser substances (vulgarly 



16 Spinoza, in his letter to Oldenberg (Op. Posth. p. 398), considers this 

 aphorism based on a wrong conception of the origin of error, and, believing it 

 to be fundamental, was led to reject Bacon s method altogether. Spinoza re 

 fused to acknowledge in man any such thing as a will, and resolved all his 

 volitions into particular acts, which he considered to be as fatally determined 

 by a chain of physical causes as any effects in nature. Ed. 



17 Operatio spirituum in corporibus tangibilibus. Bacon distinguished with 

 the schools the gross and tangible parts of bodies, from such as were volatile 

 and intangible. These, in conformity with the scholastic language, he terms 

 spirits, and frequently returns to their operations in the 2d book. Ed. 



