12 THE GREAT INSTAURATION 



te nance and expression of a virgin, while barking monsters 

 encircled her womb. Even thus the sciences have their 

 specious and plausible generalities; but when we descend 

 to particulars, which, like the organs of generation, should 

 produce fruits and effects, then spring up loud altercations 

 and controversies, which terminate in barren sterility. And 

 had this not been a lifeless kind of philosophy, it were scarce 

 possible it should have made so little progress in so many 

 ages, insomuch, that not only positions now frequently re 

 main positions still, but questions remain questions, rather 

 riveted and cherished than determined by disputes; philos 

 ophy thus coming down to us in the persons of master and 

 scholar, instead of inventor and improver. In the mechanic 

 arts the case is otherwise these commonly advancing to 

 ward perfection in a course of daily improvement, from a 

 rough unpolished state, sometimes prejudicial to the first 

 inventors, while philosophy and the intellectual sciences 

 are, like statues, celebrated and adored, but never ad 

 vanced; nay, they sometimes appear most perfect in the 

 original author, and afterward degenerate. For since men 

 have gone over in crowds to the opinion of their leader, 

 like those silent senators of Kome, 1 they add no thing to 

 the extent of learning themselves, but perform the servile 

 duty of waiting upon particular authors, and repeating 

 their doctrines. 



It is a fatal mistake to suppose that the sciences have 

 gradually arrived at a state of perfection, and then been 

 recorded by some one writer or other; and that as nothing 

 better can afterward be invented, men need but cultivate 

 and set off what is thus discovered and completed; where 

 as, in reality, this registering of the sciences proceeds only 

 from the assurance of a few and the sloth and ignorance 

 of many. For after the sciences might thus perhaps in 

 several parts be carefully cultivated; a man of an enter 

 prising genius rising up, who, by the conciseness of his 



1 Pedarii senatores. 



