70 NOVUM ORGANUM 



one now disputes) that the earth is spherical, and thence 

 asserted that there were antipodes. 62 



Even in the present state of things the condition of dis 

 cussions on natural philosophy is rendered more difficult 

 and dangerous by the summaries and methods of divines, 

 who, after reducing divinity into such order as they could, 

 and brought it into a scientific form, have proceeded to 

 mingle an undue proportion of the contentious and thorny 

 philosophy of Aristotle with the substance of religion. 63 



The fictions of those who have not feared to deduce and 

 confirm the truth of the Christian religion by the principles 

 and authority of philosophers, tend to the same end, though 

 in a different manner. 54 They celebrate the union of faith 

 and the senses as though it were legitimate, with great pomp 

 and solemnity, and gratify men s pleasing minds with a 

 variety, but in the meantime confound most improperly 

 things divine and human. Moreover, in these mixtures of 

 divinity and philosophy the received doctrines of the lat 

 ter are alone included, and any novelty, even though it 



62 Robespierre was the latest victim of this bigotry. In his younger days 

 he attempted to introduce Franklin s lightning conductor into France, but was 

 persecuted by those whose lives he sought to protect, as one audaciously striving 

 to avert the designs of Providence. Ed. 



63 We can hardly agree with the text. The scholastics, in building up a 

 system of divinity, certainly had recourse to the deductive syllogism, because 

 the inductive was totally inapplicable, except as a veriflcatory process. With 

 regard to the technical form in which they marshalled their arguments, which 

 is what our author aims at in his censure, they owed nothing at all to Aristotle, 

 the conducting a dispute in naked syllogistic fashion having originated entirely 

 with themselves. Ed. 



64 Bacon cannot be supposed to allude to those divines who have attempted 

 to show that the progress of physical science is confirmatory of revelation, but 

 only to such as have built up a system of faith out of their own refinements 

 on nature and revelation, as Patricius and Emanuel Swedenborg. Ed. 



