60 NOVUM OROANUM 



a full account of all that lias been said on the subject by 

 others, then adds his own reflections, and stirs up and, as it 

 were, invokes his own spirit, after much mental labor, to 

 disclose its oracles. All which is a method without founda 

 tion, and merely turns on opinion. 



Another, perhaps, calls in logic to assist him in discov 

 ery, which bears only a nominal relation to his purpose. 

 For the discoveries of logic are not discoveries of principles 

 and leading axioms, but only of what appears to accord with 

 them. 46 And when men become curious and importunate, 

 and give trouble, interrupting her about her proofs, and the 

 discovery of principles or first axioms, she puts them off 

 with her usual answer, referring them to faith, and ordering 

 them to swear allegiance to each art in its own department. 



There remains but mere experience, which, when it offers 

 itself , is called chance; when it is sought after, experiment. 48 

 But this kind of experience is nothing but a loose fagot; 

 and mere groping in the dark, as men at night try all means 

 of discovering the right road, while it would be better and 

 more prudent either to wait for day, or procure a light, and 

 then proceed. On the contrary, the real order of experience 

 begins by setting up a light, and then shows the road by it, 

 commencing with a regulated and digested, not a misplaced 

 and vague course of experiment, and thence deducing 

 axioms, and from those axioms new experiments: for not 

 even the Divine Word proceeded to operate on the general 

 mass of things without due order. 



Let men, therefore, cease to wonder if the whole course 



15 From the abuse of the scholastics, who mistook the d priori method, the 

 deductive syllogism, for the entire province of logic. Ed. 



46 See Aphorism xcv. 



