252 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



leaving the outer courts of Nature, which countless numbers have 

 trodden, an entrance to her inmost chamber may, at length, be opened 

 to him. And that we may be the better understood, and that our 

 object may appear the more familiar by fixing on determinate names, 

 \\e are accustomed to call the one method or way the Anticipation of 

 the Mind, the other, the Interpretation of Nature. 



We think that there is one more request to be made. We have 

 certainly taken both thought and care that our propositions should 

 not only be true, but should also reach the minds of men without 

 inconvenience or harshness (strangely prepossessed and confined 

 though they be). But still we may justly demand (especially in so 

 j;reat a restoration of Learning and Science), that whosoever wishes 

 to come to any determination, or to form any judgment of this our 

 work, under the direction of his own sense, or of the crowd of 

 authorities, or of forms of demonstration (which have now obtained 

 the weight of judicial laws), that he should not expect to be able to do 

 so in a cursory way or while he is doing something else : but that he 

 should make himself thoroughly acquainted with the matter, should 

 himself try, little by little, the way which we trace out and construct ; 

 should accustom himself to the subtlety of things which is pointed 

 out by experience ; and, lastly, should correct by seasonable and, as it 

 were, legitimate hesitation the depraved and deeply rooted habits of 

 the mind : and then, finally (if it please him), when he has begun to 

 be his own master, use his own judgment. 



BOOK I. 



APHORISMS ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE 

 AND THE KINGDOM OF MAN. 



I. MAN, the servant and interpreter of Nature, performs and under 

 stands so much as he has collected concerning the order of Nature by 

 observation or reason, nor do his powers or his knowledge extend 

 farther. 



ii. Neither the bare hand nor the understanding, left to itself, has 

 much power : results are brought about by instruments and aids, 

 which are no less needed for the intellect than the hand. And as 

 instruments for the hand excite or regulate its motion, so, likewise, 

 instruments for the mind either prompt the intellect or protect it. 



iii. The knowledge and the power of man coincide, because igno 

 rance of the cause involves the loss of the effect. For we can only 

 conquer Nature by submitting to her ; and that which in contempla 

 tion occupies the place of the cause, in operation takes that of the 

 rule. 



iv. For the accomplishment of results man can do nothing more 



