186 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [BOOK V. 



And this assertion, if carefully attended to, is proved from 

 the form of logical induction, for finding and examining the 

 principles of the sciences ; which form being absolutely 

 defective and insufficient, is so far from perfecting nature, 

 that it perverts and distorts her. For whoever attentively 

 observes how the ethereal dew of the sciences, like that of 

 which the poet speaks, 



&quot; Aerii mellis coelestia dona,&quot; 1 



is gathered (the sciences being extracted from particular 

 examples, whether natural or artificial, as from so many 

 flowers), will find that the mind of its own natural motion 

 makes a better induction than that described by logicians. 

 From a bare enumeration of particulars in the logical manner, 

 where there is no contradictory instance, follows a false 

 conclusion ; nor does such an induction infer anything more 

 than probable conjecture. For who will undertake, when 

 the particulars of a man s own knowledge or memory appear 

 only on one side, that something directly opposite shall not 

 lie concealed on the other 1 as if Samuel should have taken 

 up with the sons of Jesse brought before him, and not have 

 sought David, who was in the field. And to say the truth, 

 as this form of induction is so gross and stupid, it might 

 seem incredible that such acute and subtile geniuses as have 

 been exercised this way, could ever have obtruded it upon 

 the world, but that they hasted to theories and opinions, and, 

 as it were, disdained to dwell upon particulars ; for they 

 have used examples and particular instances but as whifflers 

 to keep the crowd off and make room for their own opinions, 

 without consulting them from the beginning, so as to make 

 a just and mature judgment of the truth of things. And 

 this procedure has, indeed, struck me with an awful and 

 religious wonder, to see men tread the same paths of error, 

 both in divine and human inquiries. For as in receiving 

 divine truths men are averse to become as little children, so 

 in the apprehending of human truths, for men to begin to 

 read, and, like children, come back again to the first 

 elements of induction, is reputed a low and contemptible 

 thing. 



But, allowing the principles of the sciences might be jretly 



1 Virgil, Georg. iv. 1. 



