THE FOURTH PART 

 OF THE GREAT INSTAURATION. 



SCALING LADDER OF THE INTELLECT ; OR, THREAD OF 

 THE LABYRINTH. 



IT would be difficult to find fault with those who affirm 

 that &quot; nothing is known,&quot; if they had tempered the rigour 

 of their decision by a softening explanation. For should 

 any one contend, that science rightly interpreted is a know 

 ledge of things through their causes, and that the know 

 ledge of causes constantly expands, and by gradual and 

 successive concatenation rises, as it were, to the very lof 

 tiest parts of nature, so that the knowledge of particular 

 existences cannot be properly possessed without an accurate 

 comprehension of the whole of things ; it is not easy to 

 discover, what can reasonably be observed in reply. For 

 it is not reasonable to allege, that the true knowledge of 

 any thing is to be attained before the mind has a correct 

 conception of its causes : and to claim for human nature 

 such a correct conception universally, might justly be pro 

 nounced perhaps not a little rash, or rather the proof of 

 an ill balanced mind. They, however, of whom we are 

 writing, shrink not from thus desecrating the oracles of 

 the senses, which must lead to a total recklessness. Nay, 

 to speak the truth, had they even spared their false accu 

 sations, the very controversy itself appears to originate 

 in an unreasonable and contentious spirit ; since, indepen 

 dently of that rigid truth to which they refer, there still 

 remains such a wide field for human exertion, that it would 

 be preposterous if not symptomatic of an unsettled and 

 disturbed intellect, in the anxious grasping at distant ex 

 tremes, to overlook such utilities as are obvious and near at 

 hand. For however they may seek, by introducing their 

 distinction of true and probable, to subvert the certainty of 

 science without at the same time superseding the use or 

 practically affecting the pursuit of it, yet in destroying the 



