XOVUM ORGANUM. 75 



106. In forming our axioms from induction, we must 

 examine and try, whether the axiom we derive, be only 

 fitted and calculated for the particular instances from which 

 it is deduced, or whether it be more extensive and general. 

 If it be the latter, we must observe, whether it confirm its 

 own extent and generality by giving surety as it were, in 

 pointing out new particulars, so that we may neither stop 

 at actual discoveries, nor with a careless grasp catch at 

 shadows and abstract forms, instead of substances of a de 

 terminate nature ; and as soon as we act thus, well autho 

 rized hopes may with reason be said to beam upon us. 



107. Here, too, we may again repeat what we have said 

 above, concerning the extending of natural philosophy and 

 reducing particular sciences to that one, so as to prevent 

 any schism or dismembering of the sciences ; without which 

 we cannot hope to advance. 



108. Such are the observations we would make in order 

 to remove despair and excite hope, by bidding farewell to the 

 errors of past ages or by their correction. Let us examine 

 whether there be other grounds for hope. And, first, if 

 many useful discoveries have occurred to mankind by 

 chance or opportunity, without investigation or attention 

 on their part, it must necessarily be acknowledged that 

 much more may be brought to light by investigation and 

 attention, if it be regular and orderly, not hasty and in 

 terrupted. For although it may now and then happen that 

 one falls by chance upon something that had before escaped 

 considerable efforts and laborious inquiries, yet undoubt 

 edly the reverse is generally the case. We may, therefore, 

 hope for further, better, and more frequent results from 

 man s reason, industry, method, and application, than from 

 chance and mere animal instinct, and the like, which have 

 hitherto been the sources of invention. 



109. We may also derive some reason for hope from the 

 circumstance of several actual inventions being of such a 

 nature, that scarcely any one could have formed a conjec 

 ture about them previously to their discovery, but would 

 rather have ridiculed them as impossible. For men are 

 wont to guess about new subjects from those they are 

 already acquainted with, and the hasty and vitiated fancies 

 they have thence formed : than which there cannot be a 

 more fallacious mode of reasoning, because much of that 

 which is derived from the sources of things does not flow 

 in their usual channel. If, for instance, before the disco 

 very of cannon one had described its effects in the follow* 



{ There is a new invention, by which walls 



