XOVUM ORGAN UM. 73 



and rather astonishes than instructs. But when experience 

 shall proceed regularly and uninterruptedly by a determined 

 rule, we may entertain better hopes of the sciences. 



101. But after having collected and prepared an abun 

 dance and store of natural history, and of the experience 

 required for the operations of the understanding, or philo 

 sophy ; still the understanding is as incapable of acting on 

 such materials of itself with the aid of memory alone, as 

 any person would be of retaining and achieving by memory 

 the computation of an almanack. Yet meditation has 

 hitherto done more for discovery than writing, and no 

 experiments have been committed to paper. We cannot 

 however approve of any mode of discovery without writing, 

 and when that comes into more general use we may have 

 further hopes. 



102. Besides this there is such a multitude and host as 

 it were of particular objects, and lying so widely dispersed, 

 as to distract and confuse the understanding ; and we can 

 therefore hope for no advantage from its skirmishing, and 

 quick movements and incursions, unless we put its forces 

 in due order and array by means of proper, and well 

 arranged, and as it were living tables of discovery of these 

 matters which are the subject of investigation, and the 

 mind then apply itself to the ready prepared and digested 

 aid which such tables afford. 



103. When we have thus properly and regularly placed 

 before the eyes a collection of particulars, we must not im 

 mediately proceed to the investigation and discovery of 

 new particulars or effects, or, at least if we do so, must not 

 rest satisfied therewith. For, though we do not deny that 

 by transferring the experiments from one art to another 

 (when all the experiments of each have been collected and 

 arranged, and have been acquired by the knowledge and 

 subjected to the judgment of a single individual) many 

 new experiments may be discovered tending to benefit so 

 ciety and mankind, by what we term literate experience ; 

 yet comparatively insignificant results are to be expected 

 thence, whilst the more important are to be derived from 

 the new light of axioms, deduced by certain method and 

 rule from the above particulars, and pointing out and de 

 fining new particulars in their turn. Our road is not along 

 a plain, but rises and falls, ascending to axioms and des 

 cending to effects. 



104. Nor can we suffer the understanding to jump and 

 fly from particulars to remote and most general axioms 



