RESEMBLANCES AND DIFFERENCES. CCXCV11 



differences are rather the sport of nature, than matters of 

 any considerable and solid use to the sciences. Such 

 things, indeed, serve for delight, and sometimes contribute 

 to practice, but afford little or no true information, or 

 thorough insight into nature ; human industry, therefore, 

 must be bent upon inquiring into, and observing the 

 similitudes and analogies of things, as well in their wholes 

 as in their parts; for these are what unite nature, and 

 begin to build up the sciences. 



Such are specimens, mere specimens, of this most valu 

 able of all his works, and by him most highly valued. It 

 is written in a plain unadorned style in aphorisms, in 

 variably stated by him to be the proper style for philo 

 sophy, which, conscious of its own power, ought to go 

 forth &quot; naked and unarmed ;&quot; (a) but, from the want of 

 symmetry and ornament, from its abstruseness, from the 

 novelty of its terms, and from the imperfect state in which 

 it was published, it has, although the most valuable, 

 hitherto been too much neglected : but it will not so 

 continue. The time has arrived, or is fast approaching, 

 when the pleasures of intellectual pursuit will have so 

 deeply pervaded society, that they will, to a considerable 

 extent, form the pleasures of our youth ; and the lamen 

 tation in the Advancement of Learning will be diminished 

 or pass away : &quot; Nevertheless I do not pretend, and I 

 know it will be impossible for me, by any pleading of 

 mine, to reverse the judgment, either of ^Esop s cock, that 

 preferred the barley-corn before the gem ; or of Midas, 

 that being chosen judge between Apollo, president of the 

 muses, and Pan, god of the flocks, judged for plenty; or 

 of Paris, that judged for beauty and love, against wisdom 



(a) See note B B B at the end, which contains an account of the various 

 editions and translations of the work, and see preface to vol. ix. 



