ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



is, that the mind, by the help of art, may become equal to 

 things, and to find a certain art of indication or direction, 

 to disclose and bring other arts to light, together with their 

 axioms and effects. And this art we, upon just ground, 

 report as deficient. 



This art of indication has two parts; for indication 

 proceeds, 1, from experiment to experiment; or 2, from 

 experiments to axioms, which may again point out new 

 experiments. The former we call learned experience, and 

 the latter the interpretation of nature, Novum Organum, 

 or new machine for the mind. The first, indeed, as was 

 formerly intimated, is not properly an art, or any part of 

 philosophy, but a kind of sagacity; whence we sometimes 

 call it the chase of Pan, borrowing the name from the fable 

 of that god. And as there are three ways of walking, viz., 

 either by feeling out one s way in the dark; or 2, when 

 being dim-sighted, another leads one by the hand; and 3, 

 by directing one s steps by a light: so when a man tries all 

 kinds of experiments without method or order, this is mere 

 groping in the dark; but when he proceeds with some direc 

 tion and order in his experiments, it is as if he were led by 

 the hand; and this we understand by learned experience: 

 but for the light itself, which is the third way, it must be 

 derived from the Kovum Organum. 



The design of learned experience, or the chase of Pan, 

 is to show the various ways of making experiments; and as 

 we note it for deficient, and the thing itself is none of the 

 clearest, we will here give some short sketch of the work. 

 The manner of experimenting chiefly consists in the varia 

 tion, production, translation, inversion, compulsion, appli 

 cation, conjunction, or any other manner of diversifying, 

 or making chance experiments. And all this lies without 

 the limits of any axiom of invention; but the interpretation 

 of nature takes in all the transitions of experiments into 

 axioms, and of axioms into experiments. 



Experiments are varied first in the subject, as when a 

 known experiment, having rested in one certain substance, 



