58 NOVUM OEGANUM 



Thus has this great mother of the sciences been degraded 

 most unworthily to the situation of a handmaid, and made 

 to wait upon medicine or mathematical operations, and to 

 wash the immature minds of youth, and imbue them with a 

 first dye, that they may afterward be more ready to receive 

 and retain another. In the meantime, let no one expect any 

 great progress in the sciences (especially their operative part), 

 unless natural philosophy be applied to particular sciences, 

 and particular sciences again referred back to natural phi 

 losophy. For want of this, astronomy, optics, music, many 

 mechanical arts, medicine itself, and (what perhaps is more 

 wonderful), moral and political philosophy, and the logical 

 sciences have no depth, but only glide over the surface and 

 variety of things; because these sciences, when they have 

 been once partitioned out and established, are no longer 

 nourished by natural philosophy, which would have im 

 parted fresh vigor and growth to them from the sources and 

 genuine contemplation of motion, rays, sounds, texture, and 

 conformation of bodies, and the affections and capacity of 

 the understanding. But we can little wonder that the sci 

 ences grow not when separated from their roots. 



LXXXI. There is another powerful and great cause of 

 the little advancement of the sciences, which is this; it is 

 impossible to advance properly in the course when the goal 

 is not properly fixed. But the real and legitimate goal of 

 the sciences is the endowment of human life with new in 

 ventions and riches. The great crowd of teachers know 

 nothing of this, but consist of dictatorial hirelings; unless 

 it so happen that some artisan of an acute genius, and am 

 bitious of fame, gives up his time to a new discovery, which 

 is generally attended with a loss of property. The major 

 ity, so far from proposing to themselves the augmentation 



