66 NOVUM ORGANUM 



gar understanding the form and appearance of a perfect 

 science. 



The first and most ancient investigators of truth were 

 wont, on the contrary, with more honesty and success, to 

 throw all the knowledge they wished to gather from con 

 templation, and to lay up for use, into aphorisms, or short 

 scattered sentences unconnected by any method, and with 

 out pretending or professing to comprehend any entire art. 

 But according to the present system, we cannot wonder 

 that men seek nothing beyond that which is handed down 

 to them as perfect, and already extended to its full com 

 plement. 



LXXXVII. The ancient theories have received addi 

 tional support and credit from the absurdity and levity of 

 those who have promoted the new, especially in the active 

 and practical part of natural philosophy. For there have 

 been many silly and fantastical fellows who, from credulity 

 or imposture, have loaded mankind with promises, announc 

 ing and boasting of the prolongation of life, the retarding 

 of old age, the alleviation of pains, the remedying of nat 

 ural defects, the deception of the senses, the restraint and 

 excitement of the passions, the illumination and exaltation 

 of the intellectual faculties, the transmutation of substances, 

 the unlimited intensity and multiplication of motion, the 

 impressions and changes of the air, the bringing into our 

 power the management of celestial influences, the divina 

 tion of future events, the representation of distant objects, 

 the revelation of hidden objects, and the like. One would 

 not be very wrong in observing with regard to such pre 

 tenders, that there is as much difference in philosophy, 

 between their absurdity and real science, as there is in his 

 tory between the exploits of Csesar or Alexander, and those 



