58 4 ^ NOVUM ORGANUM. [BOOK L 



VI. It would be madness and inconsistency to suppose that 

 tilings which have never yet been performed can be performed 

 without employing some hitherto untried means. 



VII. The creations of the mind and hand appear very nume- 

 rous, if we judge by books and manufactures ; but all that 

 variety consists of an excessive refinement, and of deductions 

 from a few well known matters, — not of a number of axioms ^ 



VIII. Even the effects already discovered are due to chance 

 and experiment rather than to the sciences; for our present 

 sciences are nothing more than peculiar arrangements of matters 

 already discovered, and not methods for discovery or plans for 

 new operations. 



IX. The sole cause and root of almost every defect in the 

 Fciences is this, that while we falsely admire and extol the powers 

 of the human mind, we do not search for its real helps. 



X. The subtilty of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the 

 understanding; so that the specious meditations, speculations, 

 and theories of mankind are but a kind of insanity, only there ia 

 ■ao one to stand by and observe it. 



XI. As the present sciences arc useless for the discovery of 

 effects, so the present system of logic'' is useless for the discovery 

 of the sciences. 



'' By this term axiomata, Bacon here speaks of general principles, or 

 universal laws. In the 19th aphorism he employs the term to expresB 

 any proposition collected from facts by induction, and thus fitted to 

 become the starting-point of deductive reasoning. In the last and more 

 rigorous sense of the term, Bacon held they arose from experience. 

 See Whewell's " Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 74 ; 

 and Mill's "Logic," vol. i. p. 311; and the June "Quarterly," 1841, 

 for the modern phase of the discussion. Ed. 



*= Bacon here attributes to the A ristotelian logic the erroneous conse- 

 paences which sprung out of its abuse. The demonstrative forms it 

 exhibits, whether verbally or mathematically expressed, are necessary to 

 the support, verification, and extension of induction, and when the 

 propositions they embrace are founded on an accurate and close 

 observation of facts, tb« conclusions to which they lead, even in moral 

 Tcience, may be regarded as certain as the facts wrested out of nature 

 by direct experiment. In physics such forms are absolutely required 

 to generalize the results of experience, and to connect intermediate 

 axioms with laws still more general, as is sufficiently attested by the 

 fact, that no science since Bacon's day has ceased to be experimental by 

 the mere method of induction, and that all become exact only so far as 

 they rise above experience, and connect their isolated phenomena with 

 general laws by the principles of deductive reasoning. So far, then, are 

 these forms from being useless, that they are absolutely essential to the* 

 advancement of the sciences, and in no case can be looked on as detrimeu* 

 tal, except when obtruded in the place of direct experiment, or employ'-tl 

 as a means of deducing conclusiuus about nature from imaginary hy))U> 



