NOVUM ORGANUM 55 



multitude concurs with, and applauds them.&quot; 41 This then 

 is one of the most unfavorable signs. All the signs, there 

 fore, of the truth and soundness of the received systems of 

 philosophy and the sciences are un propitious, whether taken 

 from their origin, their fruits, their progress, the confessions 

 of their authors, or from unanimity. ^ 



LXXYIII. We now come to the causes of errors, 42 and 

 of such perseverance in them for ages. These are suffi 

 ciently numerous and powerful to remove all wonder, that 

 what we now offer should have so long been concealed from, 

 and have escaped the notice of mankind, and to render it 

 more worthy of astonishment, that it should even now have 

 entered any one s mind, or become the subject of his 

 thoughts; and that it should have done so, we consider 

 rather the gift of fortune than of any extraordinary talent, 

 and as the offspring of time rather than wit. But, in the 

 first place, the number of ages is reduced to very narrow 

 limits, on a proper consideration of the matter. For out of 

 twenty-five 43 centuries, with which the memory and learn- 



41 Because the vulgar make up the overwhelming majority in such decisions, 

 and generally allow their judgments to be swayed by passion or prejudice. 



42 See end of Axiom Ixi. The subject extends to Axiom xc. 



43 If we adopt the statement of Herodotus, who places the Homeric era 400 

 years back from his time, Homer lived about 900 years before Christ. On add 

 ing this number to the sixteen centuries of the Christian era which had elapsed 

 up to Bacon s time, we get the twenty -five centuries he mentions. The Homeric 

 epoch is the furthest point in antiquity from which Bacon could reckon with, 

 any degree of certainty. Hesiod, if he were not contemporary, immediately 

 preceded him. 



.The epoch of Greek philosophy may be included between Thales and Plato, 

 that is, from the 35th to the 88th Olympiad; that of the Roman, between 

 Terence and Pliny. The modern revolution, in which Bacon is one of the 

 central figures, took its rise from the time of Dante and Petrarch, who lived 

 at the commencement of the fourteenth century ; and to which, on account of 

 the invention of printing, and the universal spread of literature, which has ren- 



