BOOK i.] AWTcmisMS. 407 



men wandering and roaming without any determined course, anc 

 consulting mere chance, are hurried about to various points, and 

 advance but little, at one time they are happy, at another their 

 attention is distracted, and they always find that they want 

 something further. Men generally make their experiments care 

 lessly, and as it were in sport, making some little variation in a 

 known experiment, and then if they fail they become disgusted 

 and ive up the attempt ; nay, it they set to work more seriously, 

 steadily, and assiduously, yet they waste all their time on 

 probing some solitary matter, as Gilbert on the magnet, and the 

 alchemists on gold. But such conduct sho\rs their method to be 

 no less unskilful than mean ; for nobody can successfully inves 

 tigate the nature of any object by considering that object alone ; 

 the inquiry must be more generally extended. 



Even when men build any science and theory upon experi 

 ment, yet they almost always turn with premature and hasty 

 zeal to practise, not merely on account of the advantage and 

 benefit to be derived from it, but in order to seize upon some 

 security in a new undertaking of their not employing the re 

 mainder of their labour unprofitably, and by making themselves 

 conspicuous, to acquire a greater name for their pursuit. Hence, 

 like Atalanta, they leave the course to pick up the golden apple, 

 interrupting their speed, and giving up the victory. But in the 

 true course of experiment, and in extending it to new effects, we 

 should imitate the Divine foresight and order ; for God on the 

 first day only created light, and assigned a whole day to that 

 work without creating any material substance thereon. In like 

 manner we must first, by every kind of experiment, elicit the 

 discovery of causes and true axioms, and seek for experiments 

 which may afford light rather than profit. Axioms, when rightly 

 investigated and established, prepare us not for a limited but 

 abundant practice, and bring in their train whole troops of 

 effects. But we will treat hereafter of the ways of experience, 

 which are not less beset and interrupted than those of judgment; 

 having spoken at present of common experience only as a bad 

 species of demonstration, the order of our subject now requires 

 some mention of those external signs of the weakness in practice 

 of the received systems of philosophy and contemplation k which 

 we referred to above, and of the causes of a circumstance at first 

 sight so wonderful and incredible. For the knowledge of these 

 external signs prepares the way for assent, and the explanation 

 of the causes removes the wonder ; and these two circumstances 

 are of material use in extirpating more easily and gently the 

 idols from the understanding. 



LXXI. The sciences we possess have been principally derived 



* See Ax. Ixj. towards the end. Tbi.? subject extends to Ax. Uxviii. 



