332 BACON 



mined course, and consulting mere chance, are hurried about 

 to various points, and advance but little at one time they are 

 happy, at another their attention is distracted, and they always 

 find that they want something further. Men generally make 

 their experiments carelessly, and as it were in sport, making 

 some little variation in a known experiment, and then if they 

 fail they become disgusted and give up the attempt ; nay, if they 

 set to work more seriously, steadily, and assiduously, yet they 

 waste all their time on probing some solitary matter, as Gilbert 

 on the magnet, and the alchemists on gold. But such conduct 

 shows their method to be no less unskilful than mean ; for no- 

 body can successfully investigate the nature of any object by 

 considering that object alone ; the inquiry must be more gen- 

 erally extended. 



Even when men build any science and theory upon experi- 

 ment, yet they almost always turn with premature and hasty 

 zeal to practise, not merely on account of the advantage and 

 benefit to be derived from it, but in order to seize upon some 

 security in a new undertaking of their not employing the re- 

 mainder of their labor unprofitably, and by making themselves 

 conspicuous, to acquire a greater name for their pursuit. 

 Hence, like Atalanta, they leave the course to pick up the gold- 

 en apple, interrupting their speed, and giving up the victory. 

 But in the true course of experiment, and in extending it to new 

 effects, we should imitate the Divine foresight and order; for 

 God on the first day only created light, and assigned a whole 

 day to that work without creating any material substance there- 

 on. In like manner we must first, by every kind of experiment, 

 elicit the discovery of causes and true axioms, and seek for 

 experiments which may afford light rather than profit. Ax- 

 ioms, when rightly investigated and established, prepare us not 

 for a limited but abundant practice, and bring in their train 

 whole troops of effects. But we will treat hereafter of the ways 

 of experience, which are not less beset and interrupted than 

 those of judgment ; having spoken at present of common ex- 

 perience only as a bad species of demonstration, the order of 

 our subject now requires some mention of those external signs 

 of the weakness in practice of the received systems of philoso- 

 phy and contemplation b which we referred to above, and of the 

 causes of a circumstance at first sight so wonderful and in- 

 credible. For the knowledge of these external signs prepares 

 the way for assent, and the explanation of the causes removes 

 the wonder ; and these two circumstances are of material use 

 in extirpating more easily and gently the idols from the under- 

 standing. 



71. The sciences we possess have been principally derived 

 from the Greeks ; for the additions of the Roman, Arabic, or 



