NOVUM ORGANUM 



often observed), our attempt is to be attributed to fortune 

 rather than talent, and is the offspring of time rather than 

 of wit. For a certain sort of chance has no less effect upon 

 our thoughts than on our acts and deeds. 



CXXIII. We may, therefore, apply to ourselves the 

 joke of him who said, that water and wine drinkers could 

 not think alike, 68 especially as it hits the matter so well. 

 For others, both ancients and moderns, have in the sciences 

 drank a crude liquor like water, either flowing of itself 

 from the understanding, or drawn up by logic as the wheel 

 draws up the bucket. But we drink and pledge others with 

 a liquor made of many well-ripened grapes, collected and 

 plucked from particular branches, squeezed in the press, 

 and at last clarified and fermented in a vessel. It is not, 

 therefore, wonderful that we should not agree with others. 



CXXIV. Another objection will without doubt be made, 

 namely, that we have not ourselves established a correct, or 

 the best goal or aim of the sciences (the very defect we 

 blame in others). For they will say that the contemplation 

 of truth is more dignified and exalted than any utility or 

 extent of effects; but that our dwelling so long and anx 

 iously on experience and matter, and the fluctuating state 

 of particulars, fastens the mind to earth, or rather casts it 

 down into an abyss of confusion and disturbance, and sep 

 arates and removes it from a much more divine state, the 

 quiet and tranquillity of abstract wisdom. We willingly 

 assent to their reasoning, and are most anxious to effect the 

 very point they hint at and require. For we are founding 

 a real model of the world in the understanding, such as it 

 is found to be, not such as man s reason has distorted. 



M The saying of Philocrates when he differed from Demosthenes. #d. 



SCIENCE Vol. 22 5 



