NOVUM ORGANUM 



among the Greeks, especially in Pythagoras, where, how 

 ever, the superstition is coarse and overcharged, but it Is 

 more dangerous and refined in Plato and his school. This 

 evil is found also in some branches of other systems of phi 

 losophy, where it introduces abstracted forms, final and first 

 causes, omitting frequently the intermediate and the like. 

 Against it we must use the greatest caution; for the apothe 

 osis of error is the greatest evil of all, and when folly is 

 worshipped, it is, as it were, a plague spot upon the under 

 standing. Yet some of the moderns have indulged this folly 

 with such consummate inconsiderateness, that they have en 

 deavored to build a system of natural philosophy on the first 

 chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and other parts of 

 Scripture; seeking thus the dead among the living.&quot; And 

 this folly is the more to be prevented and restrained, be 

 cause not only fantastical philosophy, but heretical religion 

 spring from the absurd mixture of matters divine and 

 human. It is therefore most wise soberly to render unto 

 faith the things that are faith s. 



LXVL Having spoken of the vicious authority of the 

 systems founded either on vulgar notions, or on a few ex 

 periments, or on superstition, we must now consider the 

 faulty subjects for contemplation, especially in natural phi 

 losophy. The human understanding is perverted by observ 

 ing the power of mechanical arts, in which bodies are very 

 materially changed by composition or separation, and is in 

 duced to suppose that something similar takes place in the 

 universal nature of things. Hence the fiction of elements, 



27 In Scripture everything which concerns the passing interests of the body 

 is called dead; the only living knowledge having regard to the eternal interest 

 of the soul. Ed. 



