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den, pretending not to know the exact spot, whereupon they 

 worked diligently in digging the vineyard, and though they 

 found no gold, the vintage was rendered more abundant by 

 their labor. 



The followers of natural magic, who explain everything by 

 sympathy and antipathy, have assigned false powers and mar- 

 vellous operations to things by gratuitous and idle conjec- 

 tures: and if they have ever produced any effects, they are 

 rather wonderful and novel than of any real benefit or utility. 



In superstitious magic (if we say anything at all about it) we 

 must chiefly observe, that there are only some peculiar and 

 definite objects with which the curious and superstitious arts 

 have, in every nation and age, and even under every religion, 

 been able to exercise and amuse themselves. Let us, therefore, 

 pass them over. In the mean time we cannot wonder that the 

 false notion of plenty should have occasioned want. 



86. The admiration of mankind with regard to the arts and 

 sciences, which is of itself sufficiently simple and almost puerile, 

 has been increased by the craft and artifices of those who have 

 treated the sciences, and delivered them down to posterity. For 

 they propose and produce them to our view so fashioned, and 

 as it were masked, as to make them pass for perfect and com- 

 plete. For if you consider their method and divisions, they 

 appear to embrace and comprise everything which can relate 

 to the subject. And although this frame be badly filled up and 

 resemble an empty bladder, yet it presents to the vulgar under- 

 standing the form and appearance of a perfect science. 



The first and most ancient investigators of truth were wont, 

 on the contrary, with more honesty and success, to throw all 

 the knowledge they wished to gather from contemplation, and 

 to lay up for use, into aphorisms, or short scattered sentences 

 unconnected by any method, and without pretending or pro- 

 fessing to comprehend any entire art. But according to the 

 present system, we cannot wonder that men seek nothing be- 

 yond that which is handed down to them as perfect, and already 

 extended to its full complement. 



87. The ancient theories have received additional support 

 and credit from the absurdity and levity of those who have pro- 

 moted the new, especially in the active and practical part of 

 natural philosophy. For there have been many silly and fantas- 

 tical fellows who, from credulity or imposture, have loaded man- 

 kind with promises, announcing and boasting of the prolonga- 

 tion of life, the retarding of old age, the alleviation of pains, the 

 remedying of natural defects, the deception of the senses, the 

 restraint and excitement of the passions, the illumination and 

 exaltation of the intellectual faculties, the transmutation of sub- 

 stances, the unlimited intensity and multiplication of motion, 



