400 NOVUM ORGANUM. [BOOK I. 



of pliilosopliers and theorists would have been introduced, like 



those which formerly flourished in such diversified abundance 



amongst the Greeks. For as many imaginary theories of the 



heavens can be deduced from the phenomena of the sky, so it is 



oven more easy to found many dogmas upon the phenomena of 



philosophy — and the plot of this our theatre resembles those of 



C the poetical, where the plots which are invented for the stage are 



2 more consistent, elegant, and pleasurable than those taken from 



( real history. 



In general, men take for the groundwork of their philosophy 

 cither too inucli from a few topics, or too little from many ; in 

 either case their philosophy is founded on too narrow a basis of 

 experiment and natural history, and decides on too scanty 

 grounds. For the theoretic philosopher seizes various common 

 circumstances by experiment, without reducing them to certainty 

 or examining and frequently considering them, and relies for the 

 rest upon meditation and the activity of his wit. 



There are other philosophers who have diligently and accu- 

 rately attended to a few experiments, and have thence presumed 

 to deduce and invent systems oi philosophy, forming everything 

 to conformity with them. 



A third set, from their faith and religious veneration, introduce 

 theology and traditions ; the absurdity of some among them 

 having proceeded so far as to seek and derive the sciences from 

 spirits and genii. There are, therefore, three sources of error 

 and three species of false philosophy ; the sophistic, empiric, and 

 superstitious. 



LXIII. Aristotle affords the most eminent instance of the 

 ftrst; for he corrupted natural philosophy by logic — thus he 

 formed the world of categories, assigned to the human soul, the 

 noblest of substances, a genus determined by words of secondary 

 operation, treated of density and rarity (by which bodies occupy 

 a greater or lesser space), by the frigid distinctions of action 

 and power, asserted that there was a peculiar and proper motion 

 in all bodies, and that if they shared in any other motion, it was 

 owing to an external moving cause, and imposed innumerable 

 arbitrary distinctions upon the nature of things ; being every- 

 where more anxious as to definitions in teaching and the accuracy 

 of the wording of his propositions, than the internal truth of 

 things. And this is best shown by a comparison of his philo- 

 sophy with the others of greatest repute among the Greeks. For 

 the similar parts of Anaxagoras, the atoms of Leucippus and 

 Democritus, the heaven and earth of Parmenides, the discord 

 and concord of Empedocles,* the resolution of bodies into the com- 



" Empedocles, of Agrigentum, flourished 444 B.C. He was the dip- 

 ispie of Telangca the Pythagorean, and warmly adopted the doctr:n« 



