1 1 6 The Advancement of Learning 



being learned incline to the traditions of experience, or 

 being empirics incline to the methods of learning. 

 9. In preparation of medicines, I do find strange, especially 

 considering how mineral medicines have been extolled,^ and 

 that they are safer for the outward than inward parts, that 

 no man hath sought to make an imitation by art of natural 

 baths and medicinable fountains: which nevertheless are 

 confessed to receive their virtues from minerals: and not 

 so only, but discerned and distinguished from what particu- 

 lar mineral they receive tincture, as sulphur, vitriol, steel, 

 or the like ; which nature, if it may be reduced to composi- 

 tions of art, both the variety of them will be increased, and 

 the temper of them will be more commanded. 



10. But lest I grow to be more particular than is agreeable 

 either to my intention or to proportion, I will conclude this 

 part with the note of one deficience more, which seemeth to 

 me of greatest consequence; which is, that the prescripts 

 in use are too compendious to attain their end : for, to my 

 understanding, it is a vain and flattering opinion to think 

 any medicine can be so sovereign or so happy, as that the 

 receipt or use of it can work any great effect upon the body 

 of man. It were a strange speech, which spoken, or spoken 

 oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he were by 

 nature subject: it is order, pursuit, sequence, and inter- 

 change of application, which is mighty in nature; which 

 although it require more exact knowledge in prescribing, 

 and more precise obedience in observing, yet is recompensed 

 with the magnitude of effects. And although a man would 

 think, by the daily visitations of the physicians, that there 

 were a pursuance in the cure : yet let a man look into their 

 prescripts and ministrations, and he shall find them but 

 inconstancies and every day's devices, without any settled 

 providence or project. Not that every scrupulous or super- 

 stitious prescript is effectual, no more than every straight 

 way is the way to heaven; but the truth of the direction 

 must precede severity of observance.* 



11. For Cosmetic, it hath parts civil, and parts effeminate: 

 ^ By Paracelsus and his school, who were chiefly distinguished by 



their use of mineral medicines. 



* The passage in the Latin on the prolongation of Life, which is 

 inserted at this point, is most curious. It was a subject to which 

 Bacon had evidently turned his attention; for he often refers to it, 

 and had great hopes respecting it. 



