24 THE GREAT INSTAURATION 



or deceive us. For there are many things that escape the 

 senses, though ever so rightly disposed; as by the subtilty 

 of the whole body, or the minuteness of its parts; the dis 

 tance of place; the slowness or velocity of motion; the com 

 monness of the object, etc. Neither do the senses, when 

 they lay hold of a thing, retain it strongly; for evidence, 

 and the informations of sense, are in proportion to a man, 

 and not in proportion to the universe. 2 , And it is a grand 

 error to assert that sense is the measure of things. 3 



To remedy this, we have from all quarters brought to 

 gether, and fitted helps for the senses; and that rather by 

 experiments than by instruments; apt experiments being 

 much more subtile than the senses themselves, though as 

 sisted with the most finished instruments. We, therefore, 

 lay no great stress upon the immediate and natural percep- 



2 Bacon held, that every perception is nothing more than the consciousness 

 of some body acting either interiorly or from without upon that portion of the 

 frame which is the point of contact. Hence all the knowledge we have of 

 the material world arises from the movements which it generates in our senses. 

 These sensations simply inform us that a wide class of objects exist independent 

 of ourselves, which affect us in a certain manner, and do not convey into our 

 minds the real properties of such objects so much as ,the effects of the relation 

 in which they stand to our senses. Human knowledge thus becomes relative; 

 and that which we call the relation of objects to one another is nothing more 

 than the relation which they have to our organization. Hence as these rela 

 tions of objects, either internal or exterior to the mind, vary, sensations must 

 vary along with them, and produce, even in the same individual, a crowd of im 

 pressions either conflicting or in some measure opposed to each other. So far 

 as these feelings concern morals, it is the business of ethics to bring them under 

 the influence of reason, and, selecting out of them such as are calculated to dig 

 nify and elevate man s nature, to impart to them a trenchant and permanent 

 character. As respects that portion which flow in upon the mind from the in 

 ternal world, it is the peculiar province of induction as reformed by our author, 

 to separate such as are illusory from the real, and to construct out of the latter 

 a series of axioms, expressing in hierarchical gradation the general system of 

 laws by which the universe is governed. Ed. 



3 The doctrine of the last two paragraphs may appear contradictory to the 

 opinion of some philosophers, who maintain the infallibility of the senses, as 

 well as of reason ; but the dispute perhaps turns rather upon words than things. 

 Father Malebranche is express, that the senses never deceive us, yet as express 

 that they should never be trusted, without being verified ; charging the errors 

 arising in this case upon human liberty, which makes a wrong choice. See 

 &quot;Recherche de la Verite,&quot; liv. i. chaps. 5-8. The difference may arise only 

 from considering the senses in two different lights, viz., physically, or according 

 to common use; and metaphysically, or abstractedly. The &quot;Novum Organum&quot; 

 clears the whole. See also Marin Mersenus, &quot;De la Yerite des Sciences. &quot; Ed. 



