OBSTACLES TO KNOWLEDGE. C 



Anxious to lay the true foundation of philosophy, he, in 

 the Novum Organum, availed himself of the power with 

 which he was entrusted, to induce the King to form such 

 a collection of natural history as he had measured out in 



person of Pan ; where, amidst great ingenuity and much beauty, he says, 

 &quot; He is pourtrayed by the ancients with horns on his head, to reach to 

 heaven, because horns are broad at the root and sharp at the ends, the 

 nature of all things being like a pyramis, sharp at the top. For individual 

 or singular things being infinite are first collected into species, which are 

 many also ; then from species into generals, and from generals (by ascend 

 ing) are contracted into things or notions more general ; so that at length 

 nature may seem to be contracted into an unity. Neither is it to be 

 wondered at, that Pan toucheth heaven with his horns, seeing the height 

 of nature or universal ideas do in some sort pertain to things divine, and 

 there is a ready and short passage from metaphysic to natural theology/ 

 A sentiment which he repeated in 1623, in the treatise De Augmentis, 

 saying, &quot; The sciences are the pyramids supported by history and expe 

 rience, as their only and true basis; and so the basis of natural philosophy 

 is natural history ; the stage next the basis is physic ; the stage next the 

 vertical point is metaphysic: as for the cone and vertical point itself (opus 

 quod operatur Deus a principio usque ad finem; the summary law of 

 nature), we do justly doubt, whether man s inquiry can attain unto it.&quot; 

 See vol. viii. p. 90 and 189. He therefore, as a portion of the third part 

 of his Instauration (see Baconiana, 41), resolved himself to commence this 

 arduous undertaking, in a work entitled Sylva Sylvarum, published years 

 after his death, by his faithful friend and secretary, Dr. Rawley, who says, 

 &quot; I have heard his lordship speak complainingly, that his lordship, who 

 thinketh he deserveth to be an architect in this building, should be forced 

 to be a workman and a labourer, and to dig the clay and burn the brick ; 

 and more than that, according to the hard condition of the Israelites at the 

 latter end, to gather the straw and stubble over all the fields, to burn the 

 bricks withal. For he knoweth that except he do it, nothing will be done : 

 men are so set to despise the means of their own good.&quot; And, in his 

 New Atlantis (vol. ii. p. 322), he preferred assisting in such a collection, as 

 more important than an inquiry into the principles of government and 

 legislation ; and he pointed out of what it ought to consist, and the modes 

 by which the obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge, from the expense 

 attendant upon such collections, might be diminished by public lectures 

 and libraries, and by collections and instruments in public institutions. 

 See ante, p. xiii. 



