NOVUM ORGANUM 15 



repulsion, element, matter, form, and the like. They are 

 all fantastical and ill-defined. 



XVI. The notions of less abstract natures, as man, doer, 



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dove, and the immediate perceptions of sense, as heat, cold, 

 white, black, do not deceive us materially, yet even these 

 are sometimes confused by the mutability of matter and 

 the intermixture of things. All the rest which men have 

 hitherto employed are errors, and improperly abstracted 

 and deduced from things. 



XVII. There is the same degree of licentiousness and 

 error in forming axioms as in abstracting notions, and that 

 in the first principles, which depend on common induction; 

 still more is this the case in axioms and inferior proposi 

 tions derived from syllogisms. 



XVIII. The present discoveries in science are such as 

 lie immediately beneath the surface of common notions. It 

 is necessary, however, to penetrate the more secret and re 

 mote parts of nature, in order to abstract both notions and 

 axioms from things by a more certain and guarded method. 



XIX. There are and can exist but two ways of investi 

 gating and discovering truth. The one hurries on rapidly 

 from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, 

 and from them, as principles and their supposed indisput 

 able truth, derives and discovers the intermediate axioms. 

 This is the way now in use. The other constructs its axioms 

 from the senses and particulars, by ascending continually 

 and gradually, till it finally arrives at the most general 

 axioms, which is the true but unattempted way. 



XX. The understanding when left to itself proceeds by 

 the same way as that which it would have adopted under 

 the guidance of logic, namely, the first; for the mind is fond 

 of starting off to generalities, that it may avoid labor, and 



