ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 49 



ter than great can discover the small ; and therefore Aristotle 

 observes, "That the nature of everything is best seen in its small- 

 est portions."** Whence he seeks the nature of a common- 

 wealth, first in a family ; and so the nature of the world, and the 

 policy thereof must be sought in mean relations and small por- 

 tions. The magnetic virtue of iron was not first discovered in 

 bars, but in needles. 



But in my judgment the use of mechanical history is, of all 

 others, the most fundamental towards such a natural philoso- 

 phy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or pleas- 

 ing speculations ; but be operative to the endowment and bene- 

 fit of human life ; as not only suggesting, for the present, many 

 ingenious practices in all trades, by connecting and transferring 

 the observations of one art to the uses of another, when the ex- 

 perience of several arts shall fall under the consideration of one 

 man ; but as giving a more true and real illumination with re- 

 gard to causes and axioms, than has hitherto appeared. For 

 as a man's temper is never well known until he is crossed ; in 

 like manner the turns and changes of nature cannot appear so 

 fully, when she is left at her liberty, as in the trials and tortures 

 of art. 



We add, that the body of this experimental history should 

 not only be formed from the mechanic arts, but also from the 

 operative and effective part of the liberal sciences, together with 

 numerous practices, not hitherto brought into arts; so thai 

 nothing may be omitted which has a tendency to inform the 

 understanding. 



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 Induction. Division of the History of Generations into the His- 

 tory 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 i. a knowledge of the things themselves 

 that are committed to history ; and 2. the first matter of philoso- 

 phy. But the former, though it has its advantages, is of much 

 more inferior consideration than the other, which is a collec- 



4 



