NOVUM ORGANUM 119 



ground for alarm at this refinement as if it were inexpli 

 cable, for, on the contrary, the more inquiry is directed to 

 simple natures, the more will everything be placed in a 

 plain and perspicuous light, since we transfer our attention 

 from the complicated to the simple, from the incommensur 

 able to the commensurable, from surds to rational quantities, 

 from the indefinite and vague to the definite and certain; as 

 when we arrive at the elements of letters, and the simple 

 tones of concords. The investigation of nature is best con 

 ducted when mathematics are applied to physics. Again, 

 let none be alarmed at vast numbers and fractions, for in 

 calculation it is as easy to set down or to reflect upon a thou 

 sand as a unit, or the thousandth part of an integer as an 

 integer itself. 



IX. 11 From the two kinds of axioms above specified, 

 arise the two divisions of philosophy and the sciences, and 

 we will use the commonly adopted terms which approach 

 the nearest to our meaning, in our own sense. Let the in 

 vestigation of forms, which (in reasoning at least, and after 

 their own laws), are eternal and immutable, constitute meta 

 physics, 18 and let the investigation of the efficient cause of 



11 Compare the three following aphorisms with the last three chapters of the 

 third book of the &quot;De Augmentis Scientiarum. &quot; 



12 Bacon gives this unfortunate term its proper signification ; M&quot;a, in com 

 position, with the Greeks signifying change or mutation. Most of our readers, 

 no doubt, are aware that the obtrusion of this word into technical philosophy 

 was purely capricious, and is of no older date than the publication of Aristotle s 

 works by Audronicus of Rhodes, one of the learned men into whose hands the 

 manuscripts of that philosopher fell, after they were brought by Sylla from 

 Athens to Rome. To fourteen books in these MSS. with no distinguishing 

 title, Andronicus is said to have prefixed the words utra. TO. Qvauea, to denote 

 the place which they ought to hold either in the order of Aristotle s arrange 

 ment, or in that of study. These books treat first of those subjects which are 

 common to matter and mind; secondly, of things separate from matter, i.e. of 

 God, and of the subordinate spirits, which were supposed by the Peripatetics 



