NOVUM ORGANUM. 45 



of things. And this is best shown by a comparison of his 

 philosophy with the others of greatest repute among the 

 Greeks. For the similar parts of Anaxagoras, the atoms 

 of Leucippus and Democritus, the heaven and earth of 

 Parmenides, the discord and concord of Empedocles, the 

 resolution of bodies into the common nature of fire, and 

 their condensation according to Heraclitus, exhibit some 

 sprinkling of natural philosophy, the nature of things, and 

 experiment, whilst Aristotle s physics are mere logical 

 terms, and he remodelled the same subject in his metaphysics 

 under a more imposing title, and more as a realist than a 

 nominalist. Nor is much stress to be laid on his frequent 

 recourse to experiment in his books on animals, his 

 problems, and other treatises ; for he had already decided, 

 without having properly consulted experience as the basis 

 of his decisions and axioms, and after having so decided, 

 he drags experiment along as a captive constrained to 

 accommodate herself to his decisions : so that he is even 

 more to be blamed, than his modern followers (of the 

 scholastic school) who have deserted her altogether. 



64. The empiric school produces dogmas of a more 

 deformed and monstrous nature than the sophistic or 

 theoretic school : not being founded in the light of com 

 mon notions (which however poor and superficial, is yet in 

 a manner universal and of a general tendency), but in the 

 confined obscurity of a few experiments. Hence this 

 species of philosophy appears probable arid almost certain 

 to those who are daily practised in such experiments, and 

 have thus corrupted their imagination, but incredible and 

 futile to others. We have a strong instance of this in the 

 alchymists and their dogmas ; it would be difficult to find 

 another in this age, unless perhaps in the philosophy of 

 Gilbert.* We could not however neglect to caution others 

 against this school, because we already foresee and augur, 

 that if men be hereafter induced by our exhortations to 

 apply seriously to experiments (bidding farewell to the so 

 phistic doctrines), there will then be imminent danger from 

 empirics, owing to the premature and forward haste of the 

 understanding and its jumping or flying to generalities 

 and the principles of things. We ought therefore already 

 to meet the evil. 



65. The corruption of philosophy by the mixing of it 



* It is thus the Vulcanists and Neptunians have framed their opposite theories 

 in geology. Phrenology is a modern instance of hasty generalization. 



