NOVUM ORGANUM 45 



of that which we now slightly touch upon, when we come 

 to lay down the true way of interpreting nature, after hav 

 ing gone through the above expiatory process and purifica 

 tion of the mind. 



LXX. But experience is by far the best demonstration, 

 provided it adhere to the experiment actually made, for if 

 that experiment be transferred to other subjects apparently 

 similar, unless with proper and methodical caution it be 

 comes fallacious. The present method of experiment is 

 blind and stupid; hence men wandering and roaming with 

 out any determined course, and consulting mere chance, 

 are hurried about to various points, and advance but little 

 at one time they are happy, at another their attention is 

 distracted, and they always find that they want something 

 further. Men generally make their experiments carelessly, 

 and as it were in sport, making some little variation in a 

 known experiment, and then if they fail they become dis 

 gusted and give up the attempt; nay, if they set to work 

 more seriously, steadily, and assiduously, yet they waste 

 all their time on probing some solitary matter, as Gilbert 

 on the magnet, and the alchemists on gold. But such con 

 duct shows their method to be no less unskilful than mean; 

 for nobody can successfully investigate the nature of any 

 object by considering that object alone; the inquiry must 

 be more generally extended. 



Even when men build any science and theory upon ex 

 periment, yet they almost always turn with premature and 

 hasty zeal to practice, not merely on account of the advan 

 tage and benefit to be derived from it, but in order to seize 

 upon some security in a new undertaking of their not em 

 ploying the remainder of their labor unprofitably, and by 

 making themselves conspicuous, to acquire a greater name 



