NOVUM ORGANUM. 61 



therefore, of all authority. For truth is rightly named the 

 daughter of time not of authority. It is not wonderful, 

 therefore, if the bonds of antiquity, authority, and una 

 nimity have so enchained the power of man, that he is 

 unable (as if bewitched) to become familiar with things 

 themselves. 



85. Nor is it only the admiration of antiquity, authority, 

 and unanimity, that has forced man s industry to rest satis 

 fied with present discoveries, but also the admiration of 

 the effects already placed within his power. For whoever 

 passes in review the variety of subjects, and the beautiful 

 apparatus collected and introduced by the mechanical arts 

 for the service of mankind, will certainly be rather inclined 

 to admire our wealth than to perceive our poverty: not 

 considering that the observations of man and operations of 

 nature (which are the souls and first movers of that variety) 

 are few, and not of deep research ; the rest must be attri 

 buted merely to man s patience and the delicate and well 

 regulated motion of the hand or of instruments. To take 

 an instance, the manufactory of clocks is delicate and ac 

 curate, and appears to imitate the heavenly bodies in its 

 wheels and the pulse of animals in its regular oscillation, 

 yet it only depends upon one or two axioms of nature. 



Again, if one consider the refinement of the liberal arts, 

 or even that exhibited in the preparaton of natural bodies 

 in mechanical arts and the like ; as the discovery of the 

 heavenly motions in astronomy, of harmony in music, of 

 the letters of the alphabet (still unadopted by the Chinese) 

 in grammar; or, again, in mechanical operations, the pro 

 ductions of Bacchus and Ceres, that is the preparation of 

 wine and beer, the making of bread, or even the luxuries of 

 the table, distillation, and the like; if one reflect also and 

 consider for how long a period of ages (for all the above, 

 except distillation, are ancient) these things have been 

 brought to their present state of perfection, and (as we in 

 stanced in clocks) to how few observations and axioms of 

 nature they may be referred, and how easily, and, as it were, 

 by obvious chance or contemplation they might be disco 

 vered, one would soon cease to admire and rather pity the 

 human lot on account of its vast want and dearth of things 

 and discoveries for so many ages. Yet even the discoveries 

 we have mentioned were more ancient than philosophy, 

 and the intellectual arts ; so that (to say the truth) when 

 contemplation and doctrinal science began, the discovery 

 of useful works ceased. 



But if any one turn from the manufactories to libraries, and 



