XOVUM ORGAXUM. 53 



ordinary could be predicted of these early systems of 



73. Of all signs there is none more certain or worthy 

 than that of the fruits produced for the fruits and effects 

 are the sureties and vouchers as it were for the truth of 

 philosophy. Now from the systems of the Greeks and 

 their subordinate divisions in particular branches of the 

 sciences during so long a period, scarcely one single expe 

 riment can be culled that has a tendency to elevate or assist 

 mankind, and can be fairly set down to the speculations 

 and doctrines of their philosophy. Celsus candidly and 

 wisely confesses as much, when he observes that expe 

 riments were first discovered in medicine, and that men 

 afterwards built their philosophical systems upon them, 

 and searched for and assigned causes, instead of the inverse 

 method of discovering and deriving experiments from philo 

 sophy and the knowledge of causes. It is not therefore 

 wonderful that the Egyptians (who bestowed divinity and 

 sacred honours on the authors of new inventions) should 

 have consecrated more images of brutes than of men ; for 

 the brutes by their natural instinct made many discoveries, 

 whilst men derived but few from discussion and the con 

 clusions of reason. 



The industry of the alchymists has produced some 

 effect, by chance however and casualty, or from varying 

 their experiments (as mechanics also do), and not from any 

 regular art or theory; the theory they have imagined 

 rather tending to disturb than to assist experiment. Those 

 too who have occupied themselves with natural magic (as 

 they term it) have made but few discoveries, and those 

 of small import, and bordering on imposture. For which 

 reason in the same manner as we are cautioned by religion 

 to show our faith by our works, we may very properly 

 apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its 

 works; accounting that to be futile which is unproduc 

 tive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it 

 yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention. 



74. Other signs may be selected from the increase and 

 progress of particular systems of philosophy and the 

 sciences. For those which are founded on nature grow 

 and increase, whilst those which are founded on opinion 

 change and increase not. If therefore the theories we 

 have mentioned were not like plants torn up by the roots, 

 but grew in the womb of nature and were nourished by her ; 

 that which for the last two thousand years has taken place 



