46 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



up with superstition and theology is of a much wider ex 

 tent, and is most injurious to it both as a whole and in 

 parts. For the human understanding is no less exposed to 

 the impressions of fancy, than to those of vulgar notions. 

 The disputatious and sophistic school entraps the under 

 standing, whilst the fanciful, bombastic, and as it were 

 poetical school rather flatters it. There is a clear example 

 of this among the Greeks, especially in Pythagoras, where 

 however the superstition is coarse and overcharged, but it 

 is more dangerous and refined in Plato and his school. 

 This evil is found also in some branches of other systems 

 of philosophy, where it introduces abstracted forms, final 

 and first causes, omitting frequently the intermediate, and 

 the like. Against it we must use the greatest caution ; for 

 the apotheosis of error is the greatest evil of all, and when 

 folly is worshipped, it is, as it were, a plague spot upon the 

 understanding. Yet some of the moderns have indulged 

 this folly, with such consummate inconsiderateness, that 

 they have endeavoured to build a system of natural philo 

 sophy on the first chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and 

 other parts of Scripture ; seeking thus the dead amongst 

 the living. And this folly is the more to be prevented and 

 restrained, because not only fantastical philosophy but 

 heretical religion spring from the absurd mixture of matters 

 divine and human. It is therefore most wise soberly to 

 render unto faith the things that are faith s. 



66. Having spoken of the vitious authority of the sys 

 tems founded either on vulgar notions, or on a few experi 

 ments, or on superstition, we must now consider the faulty 

 subjects for contemplation, especially in natural philosophy. 

 The human understanding is perverted by observing the 

 power of mechanical arts, in which bodies are very mate 

 rially changed by composition or separation, and is induced 

 to suppose that something similar takes place in the uni 

 versal nature of things. Hence the fiction of elements, and 

 their cooperation in forming natural bodies. Again when 

 man reflects upon the entire liberty of nature, he meets with 

 particular species of things, as animals, plants, minerals, and 

 is thence easily led to imagine that there exist in nature 

 certain primary forms which she strives to produce, and that 

 all variation from them arises from some impediment or 

 error which she is exposed to in completing her work, or 

 from the collision or metamorphosis of different species. The 

 first hypothesis has produced the doctrine of elementary 



