PREFACE. V 



Zealous as Lord Bacon was for improvement 

 it was not his nature to fix upon temporary evils, 

 &quot; nubecula est cito transibit,&quot; nor to suggest tem 

 porary remedies which * are confined within the 

 circle of an age or a nation, and like fruitful show 

 ers, profitable and good as they are, serve but for a 

 season and for the latitude of ground where they 

 fall : but he fixed upon constant defects and suggested 

 remedies, like the benefits of heaven, permanent and 

 universal. He, therefore, invariably endeavours to 

 discover general truths as the root or stem from 

 which particular truths proceed, (e) 



It was the custom of Lord Bacon, before he at 

 tempted to advance any science, to remove the ob 

 stacles by which its advance was impeded. His 

 treatise * De Augmentis Scientiarum, opens not with 



motibus mentalibus memorise, compositionis et divisionis, 

 judicii, et reliquorum; quam de calido et frigido, aut luce, aut 

 vegetatione, aut similibus. Apli. \ ll . 



(&amp;lt;&amp;gt;) The partitions of knowledge are not like several lines 

 that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point; but 

 are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a 

 dimension and quantity of entireness and continuance, before 

 it come lo discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs : 

 Is not the precept of a musician, to fall from a discord or harsh 

 accord upon a concord or sweet accord, alike true in affection ? 

 Is not the trope of music, to avoid or slide from the close or 

 cadence, common with the trope of rhetoric of deceiving ex 

 pectation ? Is not the delight of the quavering upon a stop in 

 music the same with the playing of light upon the water? And 

 amongst the distempers of learning, he says, after the distribu 

 tion of particular arts and sciences, men have abandoned uni 

 versality, or philosophia prima; which cannot but cease and 



