BOOK I.] APHORISMS. 427 



" That which is worst with regard to the past should appear 

 most consolatory for the future ; for if you had done all that 

 your duty commanded, and your affairs proceeded no better, 

 you could not even hope for their improvement : but since their 

 present unhappy situation is not owing to the force of circum- 

 stances, but to your own errors, you have reason to hope that 

 by banishing or correcting tlie latter you can produce a great 

 change for the better in the former." So if men had, during 

 the many years that have elapsed, adhered to the right way of 

 discovering and cultivating the sciences without being able to 

 advance, it would be assuredly bold and presumptuous to ima- 

 gine it possible to improve ; but if they have mistaken the way 

 and wasted their labour on improper objects, it follows that the 

 difficulty does not arise from things themselves, which are not in 

 our power, but from the human understanding, its practice and 

 application, which is susceptible of remedy and correction. Our 

 best plan, therefore, is to expose these errors ; for in proportion 

 as they impeded the past, so do they afford reason to hope for 

 the future. And although we have touched upon them above, 

 yet we think it right to give a brief, bare, and simple enumera- 

 tion of them in this place. 



XCV. Those who have treated of the sciences have been 

 either empirics or dogmatical.* The former like ants only heap 

 up and use their store, the latter like spiders spin out their own 

 webs. The bee, a mean between both, extracts matter from the 

 flowers of the garden and the field, but works and fashions it by 

 its own efforts. The true labour of philosophy resembles hers, 

 for it neither relies entirely or principally on the powers of the 

 mind, nor yet lays up in the memory the matter afforded by the 

 experiments of natural history and mechanics in its raw state, 

 but changes and works it in the understanding. We have good 

 reason, therefore, to derive hope from a closer and purer alliance 

 of these faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet 

 been attempted. 



XCVI. jS'atural philosophy is not yet to be found unadulter- 

 ated, but is impure and corrupted, — by logic in the school of 

 Aristotle, by natural theology in that of Plato,^ by mathematics 



' Bacon, in this Aphorism, appears to have entertained a fair idea of 

 the use of the inductive and deductive methods in scientific inquiry, 

 though his want of geom'^trical knowledge must have hindered him 

 from accurately determining the precise functions of each, as it cer- 

 tainly led him in other parts of the Organon (V. Aph. 82), to under- 

 value the deductive, and, as he calls it, the dogmatic method, and to 

 rely too much upon empiricism. Ed. 



^' The reader may consult the note of the 23rd Aphorism for the 

 fault which Bacon censures, and, if he wish to parsuc the subject 

 further, may re*d Plato's Timoeus, where that philosopher explain? hiy 



