NOVUM ORGANUM. 269 



clay of the creation, created light only, and allowed a whole day for 

 that work ; nor did He create anything material on that day. In like 

 manner, in every kind of Experience we must first elicit the discovery 

 of causes and true axioms, and must look for experiments which pro 

 duce light, and not those which produce fruit. Now axioms, when 

 rightly discovered and constructed, furnish a practice which is not 

 restricted but copious, and draw after them bands and troops of results. 

 But concerning the ways of seeking Experience, which are no less 

 beset, and blocked up, than are the ways of exercising judgment, we 

 shall speak hereafter ; at present we have only been mentioning ordi 

 nary Experience as a faulty kind of demonstration. But now the order 

 of things requires that we should add a few remarks concerning those 

 signs which we mentioned a short time ago (signs that the Philosophies 

 and Contemplations now in use are faulty), and concerning rtie causes 

 of a fact which at first sight appears so strange and incredible. For 

 a knowledge of signs prepares the way for assent ; an explanation of 

 causes removes the marvel. And these two things aid much in 

 rendering the extirpation of idola from the understanding more easy 

 and gentle. 



Ixxi. The Sciences which we possess have come down to us 

 principally from the Greeks. For what has been added by Roman, 

 Arab, or later writers, is neither much, nor of great moment ; but 

 such as it is, is founded on the discoveries of the Greeks. Now the 

 wisdom of the Greeks was professorial, and given to disputations a 

 character most adverse to inquiry after truth ; and so that title of 

 Sophist, which was contemptuously thrown back and transferred to 

 the ancient rhetoricians, Gorgias, Protagoras, Ilippias, Polus, by those 

 who wished to be esteemed philosophers, suits also the whole class, 

 1 lato, Aristotle, Xeno, Epicurus, Theophrastus, and their successors, 

 Chrysippus, Carneades, and the rest. There was this difference only, 

 that the former class was vagrant and mercenary, perambulating the 

 different states, parading their wisdom, and exacting a price for it ; 

 while the latter was more staid and liberal, in that its members had 

 fixed residence, opened schools, and taught Philosophy for nothing. 

 Both kinds, however, though differing in other respects, were pro 

 fessorial ; both degraded the matter into disputation, both instituted 

 certain philosophical facts and heresies, and did battle for them ; so 

 that their teachings were almost (as Dionysius has not inaptly objected 

 Against Plato) &quot; words of idle old men to inexperienced youth.&quot; But 

 those older Greeks, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus, 

 Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Philolaus, and the rest (for we 

 omit Pythagoras as superstitious), opened no schools that we know of, 

 but betook themselves to the inquiry after truth with greater silence, 

 with more severity and simplicity, that is, with less affectation anil 

 parade. And so theirs, in our judgment, was the better course, were 

 at not that their works have been extinguished in the course of time 

 by those of shallower men, who are more successful in responding to 

 and pleasing the apprehension and feelings of the many; time, like a 

 river, bringing down to us things which are lighter and more inflated, 



