414 KOVTJM Ol^GAi^UM. [bOOIv 1. 



centuries, witli wliicli tlie memory and learning of man are 

 conversant, scarcely six can be set apart and selected as fertile 

 in science and favourable to its progress. For there are deserts 

 and wastes in times as in countries, and we cauT onlyTeclcon up" 

 ^Tliree~~revbluti6ns and epochs of philosophy. 1. The Greek. 

 2. The Roman. 3. Our own, that is the philosophy of the 

 western nations of Europe : and scarcely two centuries can with 

 justice be assigned to each. The intermediate ages of the world 

 were unfortunate both in the quantity and richness of the 

 sciences produced. Nor need we mention the Arabs, or the 

 scholastic philosophy, which, in tliose ages, ground down the 

 sciences by their numerous treatises, more than they increased 

 their weight. The first cause, then, of such insignificant pro- 

 gress in the sciences, is rightly referred to the small proportion 

 of time which has been favourable thereto. 



LXXIX. A second cause offers itself, which is certainly of 

 the greatest importance ; namely, that in those very ages in 

 which men's wit and literature flourished considerably, or even 

 moderately, but a small part of their industry was bestowed on 

 natural philosophy, the great mother of the sciences. For 

 every art and science torn from this root may, perhaps, be 

 polished, and put into a serviceable shape, but can admit of 

 little growth. It is well known, that after the Christian religion 

 had been acknowledged, and arrived at maturity, by far the best 

 wits were busied upon theology, where the highest rewards 

 offered themselves, and every species of assistance was abun- 

 dantly supplied, and the study of which was the principal 

 occupation of the western European nations during the third 

 epoch ; the rather because literature flourished about the very 

 time when controversies concerning religion first began to bud 

 forth. 2. In the preceding ages, during the second epoch (that 

 of the Homans), philosophical meditation and labour was chiefly 



era 400 years back from his time, Homer lived about 900 years before 

 Christ. On adding this number to the sixteen centuries of the Chris- 

 tian era which had elapsed up to Bacon's time, we get the twenty-five 

 centuries he mentions. The Homeric epoch is the furthest point in 

 antiquity from which Bacon could reckon with any degree of certainty. 

 Hesiod, if he were not contemporary, immediately preceded him. 



The epoch of Greek philosophy may be included between Thales 

 and Plato, that is, from th-e 35th to the 88th Olympiad ; that of the 

 lioman, between Terence and Pliny. The modern revolution, in which 

 Bacon is one of the central figures, took its rise from the time of Dante 

 and Petrarch, who lived at the commencement of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury ; and to which, on account of the invention of printing, and the 

 universal spread of literature, which has rendered a second destruction 

 of learning impossible, it is difficult to foresee any other end than the 

 extinction of the race of man. £4, 



