270 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



but letting what is more weighty and solid sink. And yet even they 

 were not altogether free from the vice of their nation, but inclined too 

 much to the ambition and vanity of founding a sect, and catching 

 popular applause. Now the inquiry after truth must be considered 

 desperate when it turns aside after trifles of this kind. Nor should 

 we omit that judgment, or rather oracular utterance, of the Egyptian 

 priest about the Greeks :&quot; That they were always children, and 

 possessed neither antiquity of knowledge, nor knowledge of antiquity.&quot; 

 And certainly they have this characteristic of children, that they are 

 prompt at prattling, but cannot generate ; for their wisdom appears to 

 be full of words, but barren of results. Hence the signs which are 

 taken from the origin and generation of the prevalent philosophy are 

 not good. 



Ixxii. Nor are the Signs which may be gathered from the nature of 

 the time and age much better than those which are obtained from the 

 nature of the place and nation. For during that age there was but a 

 narrow and scanty knowledge either of time or the world; which is 

 an exceeding great fault, especially for those who place all their re 

 liance in Experience. For they had no history, reaching over a 

 thousand years, worthy of the name, but fables and rumours of 

 antiquity. And of the regions and countries of the world they 

 knew but a small portion ; for instance, they called all the inhabitants 

 of the north, indiscriminately, Scythians ; all those of the west, Celts ; 

 they knew nothing in Africa beyond the hither portion of Ethiopia; 

 nothing in Asia beyond the Ganges. Much less were they acquainted 

 with the provinces of the New World, even by hearsay, or any certain 

 and constant report ; yea, and very many climates and zones, in 

 which innumerable nations live and breathe, were pronounced by 

 them to be uninhabitable : moreover, the excursions of Democritus, 

 Plato, and Pythagoras, which were certainly not to a distance, but 

 rather suburban rambles, were celebrated as something great. But 

 in our times, both many parts of the New World, and the limits of 

 the Old on all sides, are familiar to us, and the stock of experiments 

 has increased to infinity. \Vherefore, if we are to take signs (as the 

 astrologers do) from the time of their nativity of birth, we find that 

 nothing of great importance is signified concerning these Philosophies. 



Ixxiii. Among Signs, none is more certain or noble than that which 

 is drawn homfrui/s. For fruits and works stand as sponsors and 

 sureties for the truth of Philosophies. And from these Philosophies of 

 the Greeks, and their ramifications through particular Sciences, now, 

 after the lapse of so many years, scarcely one experiment can be ad 

 duced, which has for its object the relieving and assisting the condition 

 of man, and which can be reckoned as really received from the specula 

 tions and dogmas of Philosophy. And this Celsus ingenuously and 

 prudently confesses : to wit, that medicines were first discovered by 

 experiment, and that men afterwards philosophizing on them, traced 

 out and assigned causes ; and that it did not happen by the inverse 

 method that experiments themselves were discovered or derived from 

 Philosophy and the knowledge of causes. And so it was not wonder- 



