NOVUM ORGANUM 91 



nor do we think that peculiar abstract opinions on nature 

 and the principles of things are of much importance to men s 

 fortunes, since it were easy to revive many ancient theories, 

 and to introduce many new ones; as, for instance, many 

 hypotheses with regard to the heavens can be formed, differ 

 ing in themselves, and yet sufficiently according with the 

 phenomena. 



We bestow not our labor on such theoretical and, at the 

 same time, useless topics. On the contrary, our determina 

 tion is that of trying, whether we can lay a firmer founda 

 tion, and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of 

 human power and dignity. And although here and there, 

 upon some particular points, we hold (in our own opinion) 

 more true and certain, and I might even say, more advan 

 tageous tenets than those in general repute (which we have 

 collected in the fifth part of our Instauration), yet we offer 



had, however, no sooner laid down this principle than he departed from it in 

 practice, and pursued the deductive method he so much condemned in his prede 

 cessors. His first step was an assumption of principles as arbitrary as any of 

 the empirical notions of antiquity; at the, outset of his book he very quietly 

 takes it for granted that heat is the principle of motion, cold of immobility, 

 matter being assumed as the corporeal substratum, in which these incorporeal 

 and active agents carry on their operations. Out of these abstract and ill- 

 defined conceptions Telesius builds up a system quite as complete, symmetrical, 

 and imaginative as any of the structures of antiquity. 



Francis Patricius, born at Cherso, in Dalmatia, about 1529, was another 

 physicist who rose up against Aristotle, and announced the dawn of a new 

 philosophy. In 1593 appeared his &quot;Nova de Universis Philosophia. &quot; He 

 lays down a string of axioms, in which scholastic notions, physical discover 

 ies, and theological dogmas, are strangely commingled, and erects upon them 

 a system which represents all the grotesque features of theological empiricism. 



Severinus, born in Jutland, in 1529, published an attack on Aristotle s nat 

 ural history, but adopted fantasies which the Stagyrite ridiculed in his own day. 

 He was a follower of Paracelsus, a Swiss enthusiast of the fifteenth century, 

 who ignored the ancient doctrine of the four elements for salt, sulphur and 

 mercury, and allied chemistry and medicine with mysticism. Ed. 



