34 NOVUM OEGANUM 



path to be pursued. The lame (as they say) in the path 

 outstrip the swift who wander from it, and it is clear that 

 the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not in the right 

 direction must increase his aberration. 



Our method of discovering the sciences is such as to leave 

 little to the acuteness and strength of wit, and indeed rather 

 to level wit and intellect. For as in the drawing of a straight 

 line, or accurate circle by the hand, much depends on its 

 steadiness and practice, but if a ruler or compass be em 

 ployed there is little occasion for either; so it is with our 

 method. Although, however, we enter into no individual 

 confutations, yet a little must be said, first, of the sects and 

 general divisions of these species of theories; secondly, 

 something further to show that there are external signs of 

 their weakness; and, lastly, we must consider the causes of 

 so great a misfortune, and so long and general a unanimity 

 in error, that we may thus render the access to truth less 

 difficult, and that the human understanding may the more 

 readily be purified, and brought to dismiss its idols. 



LXII. The idols of the theatre, or of theories, are numer 

 ous, and may, and perhaps will, be still more so. For un 

 less men s minds had been now occupied for many ages ia 

 religious and theological considerations, and civil govern 

 ments (especially monarchies), had been averse to novelties 

 of that nature even in theory (so that men must apply to 

 them with some risk and injury to their own fortunes, and 

 not only without reward, but subject to contumely and 

 envy), there is no doubt that many other sects of philoso 

 phers and theorists would have been introduced, like those 

 which formerly flourished in such diversified abundance 

 among the Greeks. For as many imaginary theories of the 

 heavens can be deduced from the phenomena of the sky, so 



