ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 99 



CHAPTER III 



Second Division of Natural History, in relation to its Use and End, into 

 Narrative and Inductive. The most important end of Natural History 

 is to aid in erecting a Body of Philosophy which appertains to Induc 

 tion. Division of the History of Generations into the History of the 

 Heavens, the History of Meteors, the History of the Earth and Sea, 

 the History of Massive or Collective Bodies, and the History of Species 



AS natural history has three parts, so it has two 

 principal uses, and affords 1, a knowledge of the 

 things themselves that are committed to history ; and 

 2, the first matter of philosophy. But the former, though 

 it has its advantages, is of much more inferior considera 

 tion than the other, which is a collection of materials for 

 a just and solid induction, whereon philosophy is to be 

 grounded. And in this view, we again divide natural 

 history into narrative and inductive; the latter whereof is 

 wanting. If the natural history extant, though apparently 

 of great bulk and variety, were to be carefully weeded of 

 its fables, antiquities, quotations, frivolous disputes, phi 

 lology, ornaments, and table-talk, it would shrink to a 

 slender bulk. But besides, a history of this kind is far 

 from what we require, as wanting the two above-men 

 tioned parts of a natural history, viz., praeter- generations 

 and arts, on which we lay great stress; and .only answers 

 one part in five of the third, viz., that of generations. For 

 the history of generations has five subordinate parts; viz., 

 1. The celestial bodies, considered in their naked phenom 

 ena, stripped of opinions; 2. Meteors, comets, 1 and the re- 



1 Bacon, in the original, classes comets among meteors, yet fifteen hundred 

 years before, Seneca had placed them among planets, predicting that the tune 

 would arrive when their seemingly erratic motions would be found to be the 

 result of the same laws. &quot;We need hardly remind the reader of the realization 

 of this sage conjecture in the magnificent discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. Ed. 



