140 BACON 



we sometimes call it the chase of Pan, borrowing the name from 

 the fable of that god. And as there are three ways of walking, 

 viz., either by feeling out one's way in the dark ; or 2. when be- 

 ing dimsighted, another leads one by the hand ; and 3. by di- 

 recting one's steps by a light ; so when a man tries all kinds of 

 experiments without method or order, this is mere groping in 

 the dark ; but when he proceeds with some direction and order 

 in his experiments, it is as if he were led by the hand ; and this 

 we understand by learned experience: but for the light itself, 

 which is the third way, it must be derived from the Novum 

 Organum. 



The design of learned experience, or the chase of Pan, is to 

 show the various ways of making experiments ; and as we note 

 it for deficient, and the thing itself is none of the clearest, we 

 will here give some short sketch of the work. The manner of 

 experimenting chiefly consists in the variation, production, 

 translation, inversion, compulsion, application, conjunction, or 

 any other manner of diversifying, or making chance experi- 

 ments. And all this lies without the limits of any axiom of 

 invention; but the interpretation of nature takes in all the 

 transitions of experiments into axioms, and of axioms into ex- 

 periments. 



Experiments are varied first in the subject, as when a known 

 experiment, having rested in one certain substance, is tried in 

 another of the like kind ; thus the making of paper is hitherto 

 confined to linen, and not applied to silk, unless among the 

 Chinese, nor to hair-stuffs and camblets, nor to cotton and 

 skins ; though these three seem to be more unfit for the pur- 

 pose, and so should be tried in mixture rather than separate. 

 Again, engrafting is practised in fruit trees, but rarely in wild 

 ones ; yet an elm grafted upon an elm is said to produce great 

 foliage for shade. Incision likewise in flowers is very rare, 

 though now the experiment begins to be made upon musk- 

 roses, which are successfully inoculated upon common ones. 

 We also place the variations on the side of the thing among the 

 variations in the matter. Thus we see a scion grafted upon the 

 trunk of a tree thrives better than if set in earth ; and why 

 should not onion-seed set in a green onion grow better than 

 when sown in the ground by itself, a root being here substi- 

 tuted for the trunk, so as to make a kind of incision in the root ? 



An experiment may be varied in the efficient. Thus, as the 



