164 BACON 



at discretion, though received by custom as by a tacit agree- 

 ment. Yet it is manifest that a great number of them is re- 

 quired in writing ; for they must be as numerous as the radical 

 words. This doctrine, therefore, concerning the organ of 

 speech, that is, the marks of things, we set down as wanting ; 

 for, although it may seem a matter of little use, whilst words 

 and writing with letters are much more commodious organs of 

 delivery ; yet we think proper here to mention it as no inconsid- 

 erable thing. For, whilst we were treating, as it were, of the 

 coin of intellectual matters, it is not improper to observe that, 

 as money may be made of other materials besides gold and 

 silver, so other marks of things may be invented besides words 

 and letters. 



Grammar holds the place of a conductor in respect of the 

 other sciences ; and, though the office be not noble, it is ex- 

 tremely necessary, especially as the sciences in our times are 

 chiefly derived from the learned languages. Nor should this 

 art be thought of small dignity, since it acts as an antidote 

 against the curse of Babel, the confusion of tongues. Indeed, 

 human industry strongly endeavors to recover those enjoy- 

 ments it lost through its own default. Thus it guards against 

 the first general curse, the sterility of the earth, and the eating 

 our bread in the sweat of the brow, by all the other arts; as 

 against the second, the confusion of languages, it calls in the 

 assistance of grammar. Though this art is of little use in any 

 maternal language, but more serviceable in learning the foreign 

 ones, and most of all in the dead ones, which now cease to be 

 popular, and are only preserved in books. 



We divide grammar, also, into two parts literary and philo- 

 sophical ; the one employed simply about tongues themselves, 

 in order to their being more expeditiously learned or more cor- 

 rectly spoken, but the other is in some sort subservient to 

 philosophy ; in which view Caesar wrote his books of Analogy,* 

 though we have some doubt whether they treated of the philo- 

 sophical grammar now under consideration. We suspect, 

 however, that they contained nothing very subtile or sublime, 

 but only delivered precepts of pure and correct discourse, 

 neither corrupted by any vulgar, depraved phrases, and cus- 

 toms of speech, nor vitiated by affectation ; in which particular 

 the author himself excelled. Admonished by this procedure, 

 I have formed in my thoughts a certain grammar, not upon 



