NOVUM OROANUM 68 



whoever passes in review the variety of subjects, and the 

 beautiful apparatus collected and introduced by the me 

 chanical arts for the service of mankind, will certainly be 

 rather inclined to admire our wealth than to perceive our 

 poverty: not considering that the observations of man and 

 operations of nature (which are the souls and first movers of 

 that variety) are few, and not of deep research; the rest 

 must be attributed merely to man s patience, and the deli 

 cate and well-regulated motion of the hand or of instru 

 ments. To take an instance, the manufacture of clocks is 

 delicate and accurate, and appears to imitate the heavenly 

 bodies in its wheels, and the pulse of animals in its regular 

 oscillation, yet it only depends upon one or two axioms of 

 nature. 



Again, if one consider the refinement of the liberal arts, 

 or even that exhibited in the preparation of natural bodies 

 in mechanical arts and the like, as the discovery of the 

 heavenly motions in astronomy, of harmony in music, of 

 the letters of the alphabet 48 (still unadopted by the Chinese) 

 in grammar; or, again, in mechanical operations, the pro 

 ductions of Bacchus and Ceres, that is, the preparation of 

 wine and beer, the making of bread, or even the luxuries of 

 the table, distillation, and the like; if one reflect also, and 

 consider for how long a period of ages (for all the above, ex 

 cept distillation, are ancient) these things have been brought 

 to their present state of perfection, and (as we instanced in 

 clocks) to how few observations and axioms of nature they 

 may be referred, and how easily, and as it were, by obvious 

 chance or contemplation, they might be discovered, one 



48 The Chinese characters resemble, in many respects, the hieroglyphics 

 of the Egyptians, being adapted to represent ideas, not sounds. 



