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model and sketch of such a history as will satisfy our in 

 tention, lest, for want of caution, others should waste their 

 time, and direct their efforts by the example of such natural 

 histories as are now in use, thus wandering far from our 

 proposal. In the mean time that which we have often said 

 must here be specially repeated, namely, that if all the 

 talents of every age had concurred, or shall hereafter concur, 

 if the whole human race had applied, or shall apply itself 

 to philosophy, and the whole globe had consisted, or shall 

 consist of academies, and colleges, and schools of the learned, 

 yet, without such a natural and experimental history as we 

 shall now recommend, it were impossible that any progress 

 worthy of mankind should have been, or should hereafter 

 be made in philosophy and the sciences. But on the other 

 hand, when it has once been prepared and drawn up, with 

 the addition of such auxiliary and instructive experiments 

 as will occur or be searched out in the course of interpre 

 tation, the investigation of nature and of all the sciences 

 will be a work of many years. This, therefore, must be 

 done, or the whole work must be abandoned, for by this 

 method only can the foundation be laid of a genuine and 

 active philosophy; and men will at once perceive, as if 

 roused from a profound sleep, what a difference exists be- 

 tw 7 een the dogmatism and fictions of man s wit, and a 

 genuine and active philosophy, and what it is to consult 

 nature herself about nature. 



In the first place then we will give general precepts as to 

 completing such a history, and will then set a particluar 

 species of it before men s eyes, alluding occasionally to the 

 end to which the inquiry must be adapted and referred, as 

 well as to the subject matter of investigation itself; in 

 order that the intention being w r ell understood and known 

 beforehand, it may suggest other points that may have es 

 caped us. To this history we are wont to give the name of 

 First, or Mother History. 



