12 NOVUM ORGANUM 



VI. It would be madness and inconsistency to suppose 

 that things which have never yet been performed can be 

 performed without employing some hitherto untried means. 



VII. The creations of the mind and hand appear very 

 numerous, if we judge by books and manufactures; but all 

 that variety consists of an excessive refinement, and of de 

 ductions from a few well known matters not of a number 

 of axioms. 3 



VIII. Even the effects already discovered are due to 

 chance and experiment rather than to the sciences ; for our 

 present sciences are nothing more than peculiar arrange 

 ments of matters already discovered, and not methods for 

 discovery or plans for new operations. 



IX. The sole cause and root of almost every defect in 

 the sciences is this, that while we falsely admire and extol 

 the powers of the human mind, we do not search for its 

 real helps. 



X. The subtilty of nature is far beyond that of sense 

 or of the understanding: so that the specious meditations, - 

 speculations, and theories of mankind are but a kind of 

 insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it. 



XI. As the present sciences are useless for the discovery 

 of effects, so the present system of logic 3 is useless for the 

 discovery of the sciences. 



2 By this term axiornata, Bacon here speaks of general principles, or univer 

 sal laws. In the 19th aphorism he employs the term to express any proposition 

 collected from facts by induction, and thus fitted to become the starting-point 

 of deductive reasoning. In the last and more rigorous sense of the term, Bacon 

 held they arose from experience. See Whewell s &quot;Philosophy of the Inductive 

 Sciences,&quot; vol. i. p. 74; and Mill s &quot;Logic,&quot; vol. i. p. 311; and the June 

 &quot;Quarterly,&quot; 1841, for the modern phase of the discussion. Ed. 



3 Bacon here attributes to the Aristotelian logic the erroneous consequences 

 which sprung out of its abuse. The demonstrative forms it exhibits, whether 

 verbally or mathematically expressed, are necessary to the support, verification, 



