NOVUM ORGANUM. 253 



than apply natural bodies and withdraw them : the rest Nature 

 transacts within. 



v. The Mechanist, the Mathematician, the Physicist, the Alchemist, 

 and the Magician, are accustomed to grapple with Nature (as far as 

 the production of results is concerned) ; but all (as things now stand) 

 with feeble efforts and slight success. 



vi. It would be madness, and a contradiction, to think that those 

 things, which have never hitherto been done, can be done, unless by 

 means never hitherto attempted. 



vii. The productions of the mind and the hand seem very numerous 

 in books and manufactures. But all that variety consists in an exces 

 sive subtlety, and in deductions from a few things which have become 

 known ; not in a number of Axioms. 



viii. Even the results already discovered are due to chance and 

 experiments rather than the Sciences ; for the Sciences, as we now 

 have them, are nothing but certain orderly arrangements of things 

 previously discovered ; not methods of discovery, or schemes for 

 obtaining new results. 



ix. Hut the one cause and root of nearly all evils in the Sciences is 

 this, that while we falsely admire and extol the strength of the human 

 mind, we do not seek its true aids. 



x. The subtlety of Nature far exceeds the subtlety of sense and 

 intellect : so that these fine meditations and speculations and reason 

 ings of men are a sort of insanity ; only there is no one at hand to 

 remark it. 



xi. As the Sciences which now prevail are useless for the discovery 

 of results, so also the Logic which now prevails is useless for the 

 discovery of Sciences. 



xii. The Logic which is now in use has rather the effect of confirm 

 ing and rendering permanent errors which are founded on vulgar 

 conceptions, than of promoting the investigation of Truth : so that it 

 does more harm than good. 



xiii. The Syllogism is not applied to the principles of the Sciences ; 

 it is applied in vain to the middle Axioms, since it is far from being a 

 match for the subtlety of Nature. And so it constrains assent, not 

 things. 



xiv. A Syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, 

 and words are the symbols of conceptions. And so if the conceptions 

 themselves (which are the groundwork of the whole) are confused 

 and hastily abstracted from things, there will be no stability in the 

 superstructure raised upon them. And so the only hope is in a true 

 Induction. 



xv. There is nothing found in the conceptions cither of Logic or of 

 Physics : the conceptions of Substance, of Quality, of Action, of 

 Passion, even of Being, are not good; much less those of Weight, 

 Lightness, Density, Rarity, Moisture, Uryness, Generation, Corrup 

 tion, Attraction, Repulsion, Element, Matter, Form, and the like; but 

 they are all fanciful and badly defined. 



xvi. The conceptions of infimce species, as Man, Dog, Pigeon, and 



