146 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Book 



erring or varying, and of nature altered or wrought ; that is, history of 

 creatures, history of marvels, and history of arts. 



The first of these, no doubt, is extant, and that in good perfection ; 

 the two latter are handled so weakly and unprofitably, as I am moved 

 to note them rs deficient. 



For I find no sufficient or competent collection of the works of 

 nature, which have a digression and deflexion from the ordinary 

 course of generations, productions, and motions, whether they be 

 singularities of place and region, or the strange events of time and 

 chance, or the effects of yet unknown properties, or the instances of 

 exception to general kinds : it is true, I find a number of books of fabu 

 lous experiments and secrets, and frivolous impostures for pleasure 

 and strangeness : but a substantial and severe collection of the hetcro- 

 clitcs, or irregulars of nature, well examined and described, I find not, 

 especially not with due rejection of fables, and popular errors : for as 

 things now are, if an untruth in nature be once on foot, what by reason of 

 the neglect of examination and countenance of antiquity, and what by 

 reason of the use of the opinion in similitudes and ornaments of 

 speech, it is never called down. 



The use of this work, honoured with a precedent in Aristotle, is 

 nothing less than to give contentment to the appetite of curious and 

 vain wits, as the manner of rnirabilaries is to do ; but for two reasons, 

 both of great weight : the one, to correct the partiality of axioms and 

 opinions, which are commonly framed only upon common and familiar 

 examples ; the other, because from the wonders of nature is the nearest 

 intelligence and passage towards the wonders of art : for it is no more, 

 but by following, and as it were hounding nature in her wanderings, to 

 be able to lead her afterwards to the same place again. 



Neither am I of opinion, in this history of marvels, that super 

 stitious narrations of sorceries, witchcrafts, dreams, divinations, and 

 the like, where ihere is an assurance and clear evidence of the fact, be 

 altogether excluded. For it is not yet known in what cases, and how 

 far, effects attributed to superstition do participate of natural causes : 

 and therefore howsoever the practice of such things is to be condemned, 

 yet from the speculation and consideration of them light may be taken, 

 not only for the discerning of the offences, but for the farther disclo- 

 ing of nature. Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering into 

 these things for inquisition of truth, as your majesty hath showed in 

 your own example : who with the two clear eyes of religion and natural 

 philosophy have looked deeply and wisely into these shadows, and yet 

 proved yourself to be of the nature of the sun, which passeth through 

 pollutions, and itself remains as pure as before. 



But this I hold fit, that these narrations, which have mixture with 

 superstition, be sorted by themselves, and not to be mingled with the 

 narrations, which arc merely and sincerely natural. 



But as for the narrations touching the prodigies and miracles of 

 religions, they arc either not true, or not natural ; and therefore imper 

 tinent for the story of nature. 



For history of nature wrought, or mechanical, I find some collections 



