84 NOVUM ORQANUM 



deduced, or whether it be more extensive and general. If 

 it be the latter, we must observe, whether it confirm its own 

 extent and generality by giving surety, as it were, in point 

 ing out new particulars, so that we may neither stop at actual 

 discoveries, nor with a careless grasp catch at shadows and 

 abstract forms, instead of substances of a determinate na 

 ture: and as soon as we act thus, well authorized hope may 

 with reason be said to beam upon us. 



CVII. Herei, too, we may again repeat what we have 

 said above, concerning the extending of natural philosophy 

 and reducing particular sciences to that one, so as to pre 

 vent any schism or dismembering of the sciences; without 

 which we cannot hope to advance. 



CVIII. Such are the observations we would make in 

 order to remove despair and excite hope, by bidding fare 

 well to the errors of past ages, or by -their correction. Let 

 us examine whether there be other grounds for hope. And, 

 first, if many useful discoveries have occurred to mankind 

 by chance or opportunity, without investigation or attention 

 on their part, it must necessarily be acknowledged that much 

 more may be brought to light by investigation and attention, 

 if it be regular and orderly, not hasty and interrupted. For 

 although it may now and then happen that one falls by 

 chance upon something that had before escaped considerable 

 elTorts and laborious inquiries, yet undoubtedly the reverse 

 is generally the case. We may, therefore, hope for further, 

 better, and more frequent results from man s reason, indus 

 try, method, and application, than from chance and mere 

 animal instinct, and the like, which have hitherto oeen the 

 sources of invention. 



CIX. We may also derive some reason for hope from the 

 circumstance of several actual inventions being of such a 



