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THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS 



FRANCIS BACON, OF VERULAM, 



CONCERNING THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, OR 

 THE INVENTION OF THINGS AND OF WORKS. 



FRANCIS BACON thought in this manner. The knowledge 

 whereof mankind is now possessed does not extend to cer 

 tainty and magnitude of works. Physicians pronounce 

 many diseases incurable, and often make mistakes, and fail 

 in the treatment of the rest. Alchymists wax old and die 

 in the embraces of hope. The works of magicians are 

 transitory and barren. The mechanical arts take but little 

 light from philosophy, and do but spin on slowly the little 

 threads of their own experience. Chance is, without doubt, 

 a beneficial discoverer of inventions ; but one that scatters 

 her favours among men in distant ages and periods. So 

 he saw well, that the inventions of man, which we possess, 

 must be counted very imperfect and immature ; and that, 

 in the present state of the sciences, are not now to be ex 

 pected, except in a great length of time ; and that those 

 which human industry has hitherto produced cannot be 

 ascribed to philosophy. 



He thought also, that in this narrowness of man s power, 

 that is most deplorable at present, and ominous for the 

 future ; that men, contrary to their real interest, strive to 

 rescue ignorance from shame, and to satisfy themselves in 

 this poverty. For the physician, besides the cautels of 

 practice (in which there are no small means of defending 

 the credit of his art), calls in what is, as it were, a general 

 cautel of art, by turning into a reproach upon nature the 

 weakness of his art ; and, what art does not reach, that he 

 discharges from art upon nature, as an impossibility; 

 neither can art be condemned, when itself judges. That 

 philosophy also, out of which the knowledge of physic, 

 which now is in use, is hewn, itself receives and cherishes 

 certain positions and opinions, which, if they be well 

 weighed, induce this persuasion, that nothing arduous or 

 powerful in nature is to be expected from art, and the hand 

 of man. Hence that opinion, that &quot; the heat of the sun or 

 star, and the heat of a fire differ in kind :&quot; and that other, 



