64 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



real action, and not by any fabulous and portentous power. 

 Yet it is not right to suffer our belief in true history to be 

 diminished, because it is sometimes injured and violated 

 by fables. In the mean time we cannot wonder that great 

 prejudice has been excited against any new propositions 

 (especially when coupled with any mention of effects to be 

 produced), by the conduct of impostors who have made a 

 similar attempt, for their extreme absurdity and the disgust 

 occasioned by it, has even to this day overpowered every 

 spirited attempt of the kind. 



88. Want of energy, and the littleness and futility of 

 the tasks that human industry has undertaken, have pro 

 duced much greater injury to the sciences: and yet (to 

 make it still worse) that very want of energy manifests 

 itself in conjunction with arrogance and disdain. 



For, in the first place, one excuse, now from its repeti 

 tion become familiar, is to be observed in every art, namely, 

 that its promoters convert the weakness of the art itself 

 into a calumny upon nature : and whatever it in their hands 

 fails to effect, they pronounce to be physically impossible. 

 But how can the art ever be condemned whilst it acts as 

 judge in its own cause ? Even the present system of phi 

 losophy cherishes in its bosom certain positions or dogmas, 

 which (it will be found on diligent inquiry) are calculated 

 to produce a full conviction that no difficult, commanding, 

 and powerful operation upon nature ought to be anticipated 

 through the means of art ; we instanced * above the alleged 

 different quality of heat in the sun and fire, and compo 

 sition and mixture. Upon an accurate observation the 

 whole tendency of such positions is wilfully to circumscribe 

 man s power, and to produce a despair of the means of in 

 vention and contrivance, which would not only confound 

 the promises of hope, but cut the very springs and sinews 

 of industry, and throw aside even the chances of experi 

 ence. The only object of such philosophers is to acquire 

 the reputation of perfection for their own art, and they 

 are anxious to obtain the most silly and abandoned re 

 nown, by causing a belief that whatever has not yet been 

 invented and understood can never be so hereafter. But 

 if any one attempt to give himself up to things, and to dis 

 cover something new, yet he will only propose and destine 

 for his object the investigation and discovery of some one 

 invention, and nothing more ; as the nature of the magnet, 



* See Axiom 75. 



