94 PREFACE TO 



ethnicis vice theologize erat." Moreover, even when men oc- 

 cupied themselves the most with natural philosophy (Bacon 

 refers to the age of the early Greek physicists), much time was 

 wasted through controversies and vain glory. Again, even 

 those who have bestowed pains upon natural philosophy have 

 seldom, especially in these latter times, given themselves wholly 

 up to it. Thus, natural philosophy having been neglected and 

 the sciences thereby severed from their root, it is no wonder 

 that their growth has been stopped. 



Another cause of their scanty progress is, that their true end, 

 the benefit and relief of man's estate, has not been had in re- 

 membrance. This error Bacon speaks of in the Advancement 

 as the greatest of all, coupling however there with the relief 

 of man's estate the glory of the Creator. Again, the right 

 path for the advancement of knowledge has not only been neg- 

 lected but blocked up, men having come not only to neglect 

 experience but also to despise it. Also the reverence for an- 

 tiquity has hindered progress ; and here Bacon repeats the re- 

 mark he had made in the Advancement, that antiquity was the 

 world's youth, and the latter times its age. 1 



Again, the progress of science has been hindered by too 

 much respect for what has been already accomplished. And 

 this has been increased by the appearance of completeness which 

 systematic writers on science have given to their works, and 

 also by the vain and boastful promises of some who have pre- 

 tended to reform philosophy. Another reason why more has 

 not been accomplished, is that so little has been attempted. 



To these hindrances Bacon adds three others, superstitious 

 bigotry, the constitution of schools, universities, and colleges, 

 and the lack of encouragement ; and then concludes this part of 

 the subject with that which he affirms to have been the greatest 



1 This remark is in itself not new ; we read, for instance, in the book of Esdras, that 

 the world has lost its youth, and that the times begin to wax old. Nor is it new in the 

 application here made of it. Probably several writers in the age which preceded 

 Bacon's had already made it, for in that age men were no longer willing to submit to 

 the authority of antiquity, and still felt bound to justify their dissent. Two writers 

 may at any rate be mentioned by whom the thought is as distinctly expressed as by 

 Bacon, namely Giordano Bruno and Otto Casmann ; the former in the Cena di Cenere, 

 the latter in the preface to his Problemata Marina, which was published in 1596, and 

 therefore a few years later than the Cena, with which however it is not likely that 

 Casmann was acquainted. Few writers of celebrity comparable to Bruno's appear to 

 have been so little read. 



I have quoted both passages in a note on the corresponding passage in [the first 

 book of] the De Augmentis : that in the Cena di Cenere was first noticed by Dr. 

 Whewell. See his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, ii. 198. 



