S THE GT^EAT INSTAURATION. 



images of the mind ; that at length we might make moi-« 

 sure and certain discoveries for the benefit of posterity. 

 And if we shall have effected anything to the purpose, what 

 led us to it was a true and genuine humiliation of mind. Those 

 who before us applied themselves to the discovery of arts, 

 having just glanced upon things, examples, and experiments; 

 immediately, as if invention was but a kind of contemplation, 

 raised up their own spirits to deliver oracles : whereas our 

 method is continually to dwell among things soberly, without 

 abstracting or setting the understanding farther from them 

 than makes their images meet ; which leaves but little work 

 for genius and mental abilities. And the same humility 

 that we practise in learning, the same we also observe in 

 teaching, without endeavouring to stamp a dignity on any 

 of our inventions, by the triumphs of confutation, the cita- 

 tions of antiquity, the producing of authorities, or the mask 

 of obscurity ; as any one might do, who had rather give 

 lustre to his OAvn name, than light to the minds of others. 

 We offer no violence, and spread no nets for the judgments 

 of men, but lead them on tojbhings themselves, and their 

 relations ; that they may view their own stores, what they 

 have to reason about, and what they may add, or procure, 

 for the common good. And if at any time ourselves have 

 erred, mistook, or broke off too soon, yet as we only propose 

 to exhibit things naked, and open, as they are, our errors 

 may be the readier observed, and separated, before they con- 

 siderably infect the riiass of knowledge ; and our labours be 

 the more easily continued. And thus we hope to establish 

 for ever a true and legitimate union between the experi- 

 mental and rational faculty, whose fallen and inauspicious 

 divorces and repudiations have disturbed everything in the 

 family of mankind. 



But as these great things are not at our disposal, we here, 

 at the entrance of our work, with the utmost humility and 

 fervency, put forth our prayers to God, that remembering the 

 miseries of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this life, where 

 we pass but few days and sorrowful, he would vouchsafe, 

 through our hands,, and the hands of others, to whom he has 

 given the like mind, to relieve the human race by a new act 

 of his bounty. We likewise humbly beseech him, that what , 

 is hunwu may not clash with what is divine; and that when 



