BOOK 1 ] APHORISMS. 431 



pected thence, whilst the more important are to be derived from 

 the new light of axioms, deduced by certain method and rule 

 from the above particulars, and pointing out and defining new 

 particulars in their turn. Our road is not a long plain, but 

 rises and falls, ascending to axioms, and descending to effects. 



CIV. Nor can we suffer the understanding to jump and fly 

 from particulars to remote and most general axioms (such as are 

 termed the principles of arts and things), and thus prove and 

 make out their intermediate axioms according to the supposed 

 unshaken truth of the former. This, however, has always been 

 done to the present time from the natural bent of the under 

 standing, educated too, and accustomed to this very method, by 

 the syllogistic mode of demonstration. But we cau then only 

 augur well for the sciences, when the ascent shall proceed by a 

 true scale and successive steps, without interruption or breach, 

 from particulars to the lesser axioms, thence to the intermediate 

 (rising one above the other), and lastly, to the most general. 

 .For the lowest axioms differ but little from bare experiment ; n 

 the highest and most general (as they are esteemed at present), 

 arc notional, abstract, and of no real weight. The intermediate 

 are true, solid, full of life, and upon them depend the business 

 and fortune of mankind ; beyond these are the really general, 

 but not abstract, axioms, which are truly limited by the inter 

 mediate. 



We must not then add wings, but rather lead and ballast to 

 the understanding, to prevent its jumping or flying, which has 

 not yet been done; but whenever this takes place, we may 

 entertain greater hopes of the sciences. 



CV. In forming axioms, we must invent a different form of 



n The lowest axioms arc such as spring from simple experience, such 

 as in chemistry, that animal substances yield no fixed salt by calcina 

 tion ; in music, that concords intermixed with di.scords make harmony, 

 &c. Intermediate axioms advance a step further, being 1 the result 

 of reflection, which, applic-d to our experimental knowledge, deduces 

 laws from them, such as in optics of the first degree of generality, that 

 the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection : and in me 

 chanics, Kepler s three laws of motion, while his general law, that all 

 bodies attract each other with forces proportional to their masses, and 

 inversely as the squares of their distances, may be taken as one of the 

 highest axioms. Yet so far is this principle from being only notional 

 or abstract, it has presented us with a key which fits into the intricate 

 wards ot the heavens, and has laid bare to our gaze the principal 

 mechanism of the universe. But natural philosophy in Bacon s day had 

 not advanced beyond intermediate axioms, and the term notional or 

 abstract is applied to those general axioms then current, not founded 

 on the solid principles of inductive inquiry, but based up:n d priori 

 reasoning and airy metaphysics. Ed. 



