432 BACON 



air itself, although but slight and meagre, and of no use for the 

 most part to the eyes of men, and those of the generality of 

 animals; because those animals to whose senses this light is 

 proportioned can see by night, which does not, in all probability, 

 proceed from their seeing either without light or by any internal 

 light. 



Here, too, we would observe, that we at present discuss only 

 the wants of the senses, and their remedies ; for their deceptions 

 must be referred to the inquiries appropriated to the senses, and 

 sensible objects ; except that important deception, which makes 

 them define objects in their relation to man, and not in their 

 relation to the universe, and which is only corrected by uni- 

 versal reasoning and philosophy. 



41. In the eighteenth rank of prerogative instances we will 

 class the instances of the road, which we are also wont to call 

 itinerant and jointed instances. They are such as indicate the 

 gradually continued motions of nature. This species of in- 

 stances escapes rather our observation than our senses ; for 

 men are wonderfully indolent upon this subject, consulting 

 nature in a desultory manner, and at periodic intervals, when 

 bodies have been regularly finished and completed, and not 

 during her work. But if anyone were desirous of examining 

 and contemplating the talents and industry of an artificer, he 

 would not merely wish to see the rude materials of his art, and 

 then his work when finished, but rather to be present whilst 

 he is at labor, and proceeding with his work. Something of 

 the same kind should be done with regard to nature. For in- 

 stance, if anyone investigate the vegetation of plants, he should 

 observe from the first sowing of any seed (which can easily be 

 done, by pulling up every day seeds which have been two, 

 three, or four days in the ground, and examining them dili- 

 gently) how and when the seed begins to swell and break, and 

 be filled, as it were, with spirit ; then how it begins to burst the 

 bark and push out fibres, raising itself a little at the same time, 

 unless the ground be very stiff ; then how it pushes out these 

 fibres, some downward for roots, others upwards for the stem, 

 sometimes also creeping laterally, if it find the earth open and 

 more yielding on one side, and the like. The same should be 

 done in observing the hatching of eggs, where we may easily see 

 the process of animation and organization, and what parts are 

 formed of the yolk, and whafof the white of the egg, and the 

 like. ^The same may be said of the inquiry into the formation 

 of animals from putrefaction ; for it would not be so humane 

 to inquire into perfect and terrestrial animals, by cutting the 

 foetus from the womb ; but opportunities may perhaps be of- 

 fered of abortions, animals killed in hunting, and the like. 

 Nature, therefore, must, as it were, be watched, as being more 



