216 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



it upon the world, but that they hasted to theories and 

 opinions, and, as it were, disdained to dwell upon particu 

 lars; for they have used examples and particular instances 

 but as whifflers to keep the crowd off and make room for 

 their own opinions, without consulting them from the be 

 ginning, so as to make a just and mature judgment of the 

 truth of things. And this procedure has, indeed, struck 

 me with an awful and religious wonder, to see men tread 

 the same paths of error both in divine and human inquiries. 

 For as in receiving divine truths men are averse to become 

 as little children, so in the apprehending of human truths, 

 for men to begin to read, and, like children, come back 

 again to the first elements of induction, is reputed a low 

 and contemptible thing. 



But, allowing the principles of the sciences might be 

 justly formed by the common induction, or by sense and 

 experience, yet it is certain that the lower axioms cannot, 

 in natural things, be with certainty deduced by syllogism 

 from them. For syllogism reduces propositions to princi 

 ples by intermediate propositions. And this form, whether 

 of invention or proof, has place in the popular sciences, as 

 ethics, politics, law, etc., and even in divinity, since God 

 has been pleased to accommodate himself to the human 

 capacity; but in physics, where nature is to be caught by 

 works, and not the adversary by argument, truth in this 

 way slips through our fingers, because the subtilty of the 

 operations of nature far exceeds the subtilty of words. So 

 that syllogism thus failing, there is everywhere a necessity 

 for employing a genuine and correct induction, as well in 

 the more general principles, as the inferior propositions. 

 For syllogisms consist of propositions, propositions of 

 words, but words are the signs of notions; wherefore if 

 these notions, which are the souls of words, be unjustly 

 and unsteadily abstracted from things, the whole structure 

 must fall. Nor can any laborious subsequent examination 

 of the consequences of arguments, or the truth of proposi 

 tions, ever repair the ruin; for the error lies in the first 



