394 NOVUM ORGANUM. [BOOK I. 



their own system accordingly; for man always believes more 

 readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects difficulties 

 for want of patience in investigation ; sobriety, because it limits 

 his hope ; the depths of nature, from superstition ; the light of 

 experiment, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should 

 appear to be occupied with common and varying objects ; para 

 doxes, from a fear of the opinion of the vulgar ; in short, his 

 feelings imbue and corrupt his understanding in innumerable 

 and sometimes imperceptible ways. 



L. But by far the greatest impediment and aberration of the 

 human understanding proceeds from the dulness, incompetency, 

 and errors of the senses ; since whatever strikes the senses pre 

 ponderates over everything, however superior, which does not 

 immediately strike them. Hence contemplation mostly ceases 

 with sight, and a very scanty, or perhaps no regard is paid to 

 invisible objects. The entire operation, therefore, of spirits en 

 closed in tangible bodies* is concealed, and escapes us. All that 

 more delicate change of formation in the parts of coarser sub 

 stances (vulgarly called alteration, but in fact a change of posi 

 tion in the smallest particles) is equally unknown ; and yet, un 

 less the two matters we have mentioned be explored and brought 

 to light, no great effect can be produced in nature. Again, the 

 very nature of common air, and all bodies of less density (of 

 which there are many) is almost unknown ; for the senses are 

 weak and erring, nor can instruments be of great use in extend 

 ing their sphere or acuteness, all the better interpretations of 

 nature arc worked out by instances, and fit and apt experiments, 

 where the senses only judge of the experiment, the experiment 

 of nature and the thing itself. 



LI. The human understanding is, by its own nature, prone to 

 abstraction, and supposes that which is fluctuating to be fixed. 

 But it is better to dissect than abstract nature ; such was the 

 method employed by the school of Democritus,* which made 



Spinoza refused to acknowledge in man any such thing as a will, and 

 resolved all his volitions into particular acts, which he considered to be 

 as fatally determined by a chain of physical causes as any effects in 

 nature. Ed. 



i Operatio spirituum in corporibus tanyibilibus. Bacon distin 

 guished with the schools the gross and tangible parts of bodies, from 

 such as were volatile and untangible. These, in conformity with the 

 scholastic language, he terms spirits, and frequently returns to their 

 operations in the 2nd book. See vii. 4th para. b. 2. Ed. 



r Democritus, of Abdera, a disciple oi Leucippus, born B.C. 470, 

 died 360 ; all his works are destroyed. He is said to be the author oi 

 the doctrine of atoms : he denied the immortality of the soul, and first 

 taught that the milky way was occasioned by a confused light from a 

 multitude) oi stare, He may be considered as the parent oi expezi* 



