328 BACON 



be difficult to find another in this age, unless perhaps in the 

 philosophy of Gilbert. We could not, however, neglect to cau- 

 tion others against this school, because we already foresee and 

 argue, that if men be hereafter induced by our exhortations to 

 apply seriously to experiments (bidding farewell to the sophis- 

 tic doctrines), there will then be imminent danger from em- 

 pirics, owing to the premature and forward haste of the un- 

 derstanding, and its jumping or flying to generalities and the 

 principles of things. We ought, therefore, already to meet the 

 evil. 



65. The corruption of philosophy by the mixing of it up 

 with superstition and theology, is of a much wider extent, and 

 is most injurious to it both as a whole and in parts. For the 

 human understanding is no less exposed to the impressions of 

 fancy, than to those of vulgar notions. The disputatious and 

 sophistic school entraps the understanding, whilst the fanciful, 

 bombastic, and, as it were, poetical school, rather flatters it. 

 There is a clear example of this among the Greeks, especially 

 in Pythagoras, where, however, the superstition is coarse and 

 overcharged, but it is more dangerous and refined in Plato and 

 his school. This evil is found also in some branches of other 

 systems of philosophy, where it introduces abstracted forms, 

 final and first causes, omitting frequently the intermediate and 

 the like. Against it we must use the greatest caution ; for the 

 apotheosis of error is the greatest evil of all, and when folly is 

 worshipped, it is, as it were, a plague spot upon the under- 

 standing. Yet some of the moderns have indulged this folly 

 with such consummate inconsiderateness, that they have en- 

 deavored to build a system of natural philosophy on the first 

 chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and other parts of Script- 

 ure ; seeking thus the dead amongst the living. And this folly 

 is the more to be prevented and restrained, because not only 

 fantastical philosophy, but heretical religion spring from the ab- 

 surd mixture of matters divine and human. It is therefore 

 most wise soberly to render unto faith the things that are 

 faith's. 



66. Having spoken of the vicious authority of the systems 

 founded either on vulgar notions, or on a few experiments, or 

 on superstition, we must now consider the faulty subjects for 

 contemplation, especially in natural philosophy. The human 

 understanding is perverted by observing the power of me- 

 chanical arts, in which bodies are very materially changed by 

 composition or separation, and is induced to suppose that some- 

 thing similar takes place in the universal nature of things. 

 Hence the fiction of elements, and their co-operation in form- 

 ing natural bodies. Again, when man reflects upon the entire 

 liberty of nature, he meets with particular species of things, as 



