136 BACON 



ties give no certain directions ; and, therefore, that the marro tv 

 of all sciences, whereby the artist is distinguished from the un- 

 skilful workman, consists in middle propositions, which ex- 

 perience has delivered and taught in each particular sciences 

 Hence those who write upon the first inventors of things, and 

 the origin of the sciences, rather celebrate chance than art, and 

 bring in beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents, rather than men, as 

 the first teachers of arts. 



" Dictamnum genitrix Cretsea carpit ab Ida, 

 Puberibus caulem foliis, et flore comantem 

 Purpureo: non ilia feris incognita capris 

 Gramina, cum tergo volucres haesere sagittae." Virgil. d 



No wonder, therefore, as the manner of antiquity was to con- 

 secrate the inventors of useful things, that the Egyptians, an 

 ancient nation, to which many arts owe their rise, had their tem- 

 ples filled with the images of brutes, and but a few human idols 

 amongst them. 



" Omnigenumque Deum monstra et latrator Anubis 

 Contra Neptunum et Venerem, contraque Minervam." Virgil.? 



And if we should, according to the traditions of the Greeks, 

 ascribe the first invention of arts to men, yet we cannot say that 

 Prometheus studied the invention of fire ; or that when he first 

 struck the flint he expected sparks, but that he fell upon it by 

 accident, and, as the poets say, stole it from Jupiter. So that 

 as to the invention of arts, we are rather beholden to the wild 

 goat for chirurgery, to the nightingale for music, to the stork 

 for glysters, to the accidental flying off of a pot's cover for artil- 

 lery, and, in a word, to chance, or anything else, rather than to 

 logic. Nor does the manner of invention, described by Virgil, 

 differ much from the former; viz., that practice and intent 

 thought by degrees struck out various arts. 



" Ut varias usus meditando extunderet artes 

 Paulatim." Virgil./ 



For this is no other than what brutes are capable of, and fre- 

 quently practise; viz., an intent solicitude about some one 

 thing, and a perpetual exercise thereof, which the necessity of 

 their preservation imposes upon them; for Cicero truly ob- 

 served, that practice applied wholly to one thing, often con- 

 quers both nature and art : " Usus uni rei deditus, et naturam 



