354 BAC( 



schism or dismembering of the sciences; without which we 

 cannot hope to advance. 



108. Such are the observations we would make in order to 

 remove despair and excite hope, by bidding farewell to the 

 errors of past ages, or by their correction. Let us examine 

 whether there be other grounds for hope. And, first, if many 

 useful discoveries have occurred to mankind by chance or op- 

 portunity, without investigation or attention on their part, it 

 must necessarily be acknowledged that much more may be 

 brought to light by investigation and attention, it if be regular 

 and orderly, not hasty and interrupted. For although it may 

 now and then happen that one falls by chance upon something 

 that had before escaped considerable efforts and laborious in- 

 quiries, yet undoubtedly the reverse is generally the case. We 

 may, therefore, hope for further, better, and more frequent re- 

 sults from man's reason, industry, method, and application, 

 than from chance and mere animal instinct, and the like, which 

 have hitherto been the sources of invention. 



109. We may also derive some reason for hope from the cir- 

 cumstance of several actual inventions being of such a nature, 

 that scarcely any one could have formed a conjecture about 

 them previously to their discovery, but would rather have 

 ridiculed them as impossible. For men are wont to guess about 

 new subjects from those they are already acquainted with, and 

 the hasty and vitiated fancies they have thence formed : than 

 which there cannot be a more fallacious mode of reasoning, be- 

 cause much of that which is derived from the sources of things 

 does not flow in their usual channel. 



If, for instance, before the discovery of cannon, one had 

 described its effects in the following manner : There is a new in- 

 vention by which walls and the greatest bulwarks can be shaken 

 and overthrown from a considerable distance ; men would have 

 begun to contrive various means of multiplying the force of 

 projectiles and machines by means of weights and wheels, and 

 other modes of battering and projecting. But it is improbable 

 that any imagination or fancy would have hit upon a fiery blast, 

 expanding and developing itself so suddenly and violently, 

 because none would have seen an instance at all resembling it, 

 except perhaps in earthquakes or thunder, which they would 

 have immediately rejected as the great operations of nature, 

 not to be imitated by man. 



So, if before the discovery of silk thread, any one had ob- 

 served, That a species of thread had been discovered, fit for 

 dresses and furniture, far surpassing the thread of worsted or 

 flax in fineness, and at the same time in tenacity, beauty, and 

 softness ; men would have begun to imagine something about 

 Chinese plants, or the fine hair of some animals, or the feathers 



