20 THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORK. 



men have so conducted themselves hitherto, that it is 

 little to be wondered at if nature do not disclose herself 

 to them. 



For in the first place the defective and fallacious evi 

 dence of our senses, a system of observation slothful and 

 unsteady as though acting from chance, a tradition vain 

 and depending on common report, a course of practice in 

 tent upon effects and servile, blind, dull, vague, and abrupt 

 experiments, and lastly our careless and meagre natural 

 history, have collected together, for the use of the under 

 standing, the most defective materials as regards philo 

 sophy and the sciences. 



In the next place a preposterous refinement, and as it 

 were ventilation of argument, is attempted as a late re 

 medy for a matter become clearly desperate, and neither 

 makes any improvement, nor removes errors. There re 

 mains no hope therefore of greater advancement and pro 

 gress unless by some restoration of the sciences. 



But this must commence entirely with natural history. 

 For it is useless to clean the mirror if it have no images 

 to reflect, and it is manifest that we must prepare proper 

 matter for the understanding as well as steady support. 

 But our history, like our logic, differs in many respects, 

 from the received, in its end or office, in its very matter 

 and compilation, in its nicety, in its selection, and in its 

 arrangements relatively to what follows. 



For in the first place, we begin with that species of natural 

 history which is not so much calculated to amuse by the 

 variety of its objects, or to offer immediate results by its 

 experiments, as to throw a light upon the discovery of 

 causes, and to present as it were its bosom as the first nurse 

 of philosophy. For although we regard principally effects 

 and the active division of the sciences, yet we wait for the 

 time of harvest, and do not go about to reap moss and a 

 green crop : being sufficiently aware that well formed axioms 

 draw whole crowds of effects after them, and do not manifest 

 their effects partially but in abundance. But we wholly 

 condemn and banish that unreasonable and puerile desire of 

 immediately seizing some pledges as it were of new effects, 

 which, like the apple of Atalanta, retard our course such 

 then is the office of our natural history. 



With regard to its compilation, we intend not to form 

 a history of nature at liberty and in her usual course, 

 when she proceeds willingly and acts of her own accord 

 (as for instance the history of the heavenly bodies, me- 



