NOVUAI ORGAN UM. 85 



perfect line or circle with a ruler or compasses, than 

 another can by his unassisted hand or eye, he surely 

 cannot be said to boast of much. Now this applies not 

 only to our first original attempt, but also to those who 

 shall hereafter apply themselves to the pursuit. For our 

 method of discovering the sciences merely levels men s 

 wits, and leaves but little to their superiority, since it 

 achieves every thing by the most certain rules and demon 

 strations. Whence (as we have often observed) our attempt 

 is to be attributed to fortune rather than talent, and is 

 the offspring of time rather than of wit. For a certain sort 

 of chance has no less effect upon our thoughts than on our 

 acts and deeds. 



123. We may therefore apply to ourselves the joke of him 

 who said &quot; that water and wine drinkers could not think 

 alike,&quot; especially as it hits the matter so well. For others, 

 both ancients and moderns, have in the sciences drank a 

 crude liquor like water, either flowing of itself from the 

 understanding or drawn up by logic as the wheel draws up 

 the bucket. But we drink and pledge others with a liquor 

 made of many well ripened grapes collected and plucked 

 from particular branches, squeezed in the press, and at Inst 

 clarified and fermented in a vessel. It is not therefore 

 wonderful that we should not agree with others. 



124. Another objection will without doubt be made, 

 namely, that we have not ourselves established a correct or 

 the best goal or aim of the sciences (the very defect we 

 blame in others). For they will say that the contempla 

 tion of truth is more dignified and exalted than any utility 

 or extent of effects: but that our dwelling so long and 

 anxiously on experience and matter, and the fluctuating 

 state of particulars fastens the mind to earth, or rather 

 casts it down into an abyss of confusion and disturbance, 

 and separates and removes it from a much more divine 

 state, the quiet and tranquillity of abstract wisdom. We 

 willingly assent to their reasoning, and are most anxious to 

 effect the very point they hint at and require. For we 

 are founding a real model of the world in the understand 

 ing, such as it is found to be, not such as man s reason has 

 distorted. Now this cannot be done without dissecting and 

 anatomising the world most diligently ; but we declare it 

 necessary to destroy completely the vain little, and as it 

 were apish imitations of the world, which have been formed 

 in various systems of philosophy by men s fancies. Let 

 men learn (as we have said above) the difference that 

 exists between the idols of the human mind and the ideas 



