272 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



Academy, which professedly held Acatalepsy, and condemned men to 

 everlasting darkness. Hence the opinion that it is impossible, and be 

 yond man s power, to discover forms, or the true differences of things 

 (which are really laws of pure act). Hence those opinions on the 

 active and operative side, that the Heat of the sun and of fire differ 

 toto generc ; lest, forsooth, men should think that they can themselves 

 educe and form, by the operation of fire, anything like the results of 

 Nature. Hence that idea that composition only is the work of man, 

 and mixture that of Nature alone ; lest, forsooth, men should expect 

 from art any generation or transformation of natural bodies. And so, 

 by this Sign, men will easily allow themselves to be persuaded not to 

 mix up their fortunes and labours with dogmas which are not only 

 despaired of, but even devoted to desperation. 



Ixxvi. Nor must we neglect the Sign that there was formerly among 

 philosophers so great dissension, and so great a variety in the Schools 

 themselves ; a fact that sufficiently shows that the road from the 

 Sense to the Intellect was not well constructed, since the same ground- 

 worn of Philosophy (that is to say, the Nature of things) was torn up 

 and distracted into such vague and manifold errors. And although 

 in these times dissensions and diversities of opinions on first principles 

 and entire systems of Philosophy are for the most part extinct, yet 

 about parts of that Philosophy there remain innumerable questions and 

 controversies; so that it plainly appears that neither in the systems 

 of Philosophy themselves nor in the methods of Demonstration is there 

 anything certain or sound. 



Ixxvii. And as to the opinion that in the Philosophy of Aristotle 

 there is certainly great consent, since after its promulgation the 

 Philosophies of the ancients ceased and became obsolete, while in 

 the times which followed nothing better was discovered ; so that 

 it seems to have been so well laid down and founded as to have 

 drawn both ages to itself: we reply, in the first place, that the popular 

 notion of the falling into abeyance of the ancient Philosophies, on the 

 publication of Aristotle s works, is a false one, for the works of the 

 older philosophers remained a long while afterwards, even to the time 

 of Cicero and the ages following. But, in the times which ensued, 

 when human learning had, so to speak, suffered shipwreck in the 

 inundation of the Roman Empire by the barbarians, then the Philo 

 sophies of Aristotle and Plato, like planks of a lighter and less solid 

 material, were preserved on the waves of time. Moreover that notion 

 of consent deceives men, as they would see if they only looked a little 

 more sharply into the matter. For true consent is that which consists 

 in the coming of unfettered judgments to the same conclusions (the 

 matter having been previously investigated). But by far the greatest 

 number of those who have consented to the Philosophy of Aristotle 

 have enslaved themselves to it from prejudice and the authority of 

 others, so that theirs is rather obsequiousness and concurrence than 

 consent : but even if it had been real and widespread consent, so little 

 right has consent to be received as a true and solid authority, that it 

 even involves a violent presumption in the opposite direction. For 



