352 BACON 



the operations of the understanding or philosophy, still the un- 

 derstanding is as incapable of acting on such materials of itself, 

 with the aid of memory alone, as any person would be of retain- 

 ing and achieving, by memory, the computation of an almanac. 

 Yet meditation has hitherto done more for discovery than writ- 

 ing, and no experiments have been committed to paper. We 

 cannot, however, approve of any mode of discovery without 

 writing, and when that comes into more general use, we may 

 have further hopes. 



102. Besides this, there is such a multitude and host, as it 

 were, of particular objects, and lying so widely dispersed, as to 

 distract and confuse the understanding; and we can, therefore, 

 hope for no advantage from its skirmishing, and quick move- 

 ments and incursions, unless we put its forces in due order and 

 array, by means of proper and well arranged, and, as it were, 

 living tables of discovery of these matters, which are the subject 

 of investigation, and the mind then apply itself to the ready 

 prepared and digested aid which such tables afford. 



103. When we have thus properly and regularly placed be- 

 fore the eyes a collection of particulars, we must not immedi- 

 ately proceed to the investigation and discovery of new par- 

 ticulars or effects, or, at least, if we do so, must not rest satisfied 

 therewith. For, though we do not deny that by transferring 

 the experiments from one art to another (when all the experi- 

 ments of each have been collected and arranged, and have been 

 acquired by the knowledge, and subjected to the judgment of a 

 single individual), many new experiments may be discovered 

 tending to benefit society and mankind, by what we term literate 

 experience; yet comparatively insignificant results are to be 

 expected thence, whilst the more important are to be derived 

 from the new light of axioms, deduced by certain method and 

 rule from the above particulars, and pointing out and defining 

 new particulars in their turn. Our road is not a long plain, but 

 rises and falls, ascending to axioms, and descending to effects. 



104. Nor can we suffer the understanding to jump and fly 

 from particulars to remote and most general axioms (such as 

 are termed the principles of arts and things), and thus prove 

 and make out their intermediate axioms according to the sup- 

 posed unshaken truth of the former. This, however, has always 

 been done to the present time from the natural bent of the un- 

 derstanding, educated too, and accustomed to this very method, 

 by the syllogistic mode of demonstration. But we can then only 

 augur well for the sciences, when the ascent shall proceed by a 

 true scale and successive steps, without interruption or breach, 

 from particulars to the lesser axioms, thence to the intermediate 

 (rising one above the other), and lastly, to the most general. 

 For the lowest axioms differ but little from bare experiments ; 



