62 NOVUM OROANUM 



grow, being at first rude, then convenient, lastly polished, 

 and perpetually improved. 



LXXV. There is yet another sign (if such it may be 

 termed, being rather an evidence, and one of the strongest 

 nature), namely, the actual confession of those very authori 

 ties whom men now follow; for even they who decide on 

 things so daringly, yet at times, when they reflect, betake 

 themselves to complaints about the subtilty of nature, the 

 obscurity of things, and the weakness of man s wit. If they 

 would merely do this, they might perhaps deter those who 

 are of a timid disposition from further inquiry, but would 

 excite and stimulate those of a more active and confident 

 turn to further advances. They are not, however, satisfied 

 with confessing so much of themselves, but consider every 

 thing which has been either unknown or unattempted by 

 themselves or their teachers, as beyond the limits of possi 

 bility, and thus, with most consummate pride and envy, 

 convert the defects of their own discoveries into a calumny 

 on nature and a source of despair to every one else. Hence 

 arose the New Academy, which openly professed scepti 

 cism, 38 and consigned mankind to eternal darkness; hence 

 the notion that forms, or the true differences of things (which 

 are in fact the laws of simple action), are beyond man s 



38 We have before observed, that the New Academy did not profess skep 

 ticism, but the a.Ka.Td\T)\i/ia, or incomprehensibility of the absolute essences of 

 things. Even modern physicists are not wanting, to assert with this school 

 that the utmost knowledge we can obtain is relative, and necessarily short of 

 absolute certainty. It is not without an appearance of truth that these philoso 

 phers maintain that our ideas and perceptions do not express the nature of the 

 things which they represent, but only the effects of the peculiar organs by 

 which they are conveyed to the understanding, so that were these organs 

 changed, we should have different conceptions of their nature. That constitu 

 tion of air which is dark to man is luminous to bats and owls. 



