94 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



hopes and beliefs of strange and impossible shapes. And, 

 therefore, we may note in these sciences which hold so much 

 of imagination and belief, as this degenerate natural magic, 

 alchemy, astrology, and the like, that in their propositions the 

 description of the means is ever more monstrous than the 

 pretence or end. For it is a thing more probable that he that 

 knoweth well the natures of weight, of colour, of pliant and 

 fragile in respect of the hammer, of volatile and fixed in respect 

 of the tire, and the rest, may superinduce upon some metal 

 the nature and form of gold by such mechanic as longeth to 

 the production of the natxires afore rehearsed, than that some 

 grains of the medicine projected should in a few moments of 

 time turn a sea of quicksilver or other material into gold. 

 80 it is more probable that he that knoweth the nature of 

 arefaction, the nature of assimilation of nourishment to the 

 thing nourished, the manner of increase and clearing of spirits, 

 the manner of the depredations which spirits make upon the 

 humours and solid parts, shall by ambages of diets, bathings, 

 anointings, medicines, motions, and the like, prolong life, or 

 restore some degree of youth or vivacity, than that it can be 

 done with the use of a few drops or scruples of a liquor or 

 receipt. To conclude, therefore, the true natural magic, which 

 is that great liberty and latitude of operation which dependeth 

 upon the knowledge of forms, I may report deficient, as the 

 relative thereof is. To which part, if we be serious and incline 

 not to vanities and plausible discourse, besides the deriving 

 and deducing the operations themselves from metaphysic, 

 there are pertinent two points of much purpose, the one by 

 way of preparation, the other by way of caution. The first is, 

 that there be made a calendar, resembling an inventory of the 

 estate of man, containing all the inventions (being the works 

 or fruits of Nature or art) which are now extant, and whereof 

 man is already possessed ; out of which doth naturally result 

 a note what things are yet held impossible, or not invented, 

 which calendar will be the more artificial and serviceable if to 

 every reputed impossibility you add what thing is extant 

 which corneth the nearest in degree to that impossibility ; to 

 the end that by these optatives and potentials man s inquiry 

 may be the more awake in deducing direction of works from 

 the speculation of causes. And secondly, that those experi 

 ments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and 

 present use, but those principally which are of most universal 

 consequence for invention of other experiments, and those 

 which give most light to the invention of causes ; for the inven 

 tion of the mariner s needle, which giveth the direction, is of 



