NOVUM ORGANUM. 275 



sources and true contemplations of motions, rays, sounds, textures 

 and structures of bodies, affections, and apprehensions of the Intellect. 

 And so it is very little marvel if the Sciences do not grow, since they 

 are separated from their roots. 



Ixxxi. Again, there appears another potent and weighty cause why 

 the Sciences have made but little advance. And it is this : it is im 

 possible to proceed rightly in the course when the goal itself is not 

 rightly placed and fixed. Now, the true and legitimate goal of the 

 Sciences is none other than this, to endow human life with new dis 

 coveries and resources. But the great mass of men feel nothing of 

 this, but merely work for reward and professionally ; unless, perhaps, 

 it sometimes happens that some artificer of a sharper wit, and desir 

 ous of fame, gives his labour to some new invention ; which is 

 generally done at the expense of his property. But as for most men, 

 so far are they from proposing to themselves to obtain an addition to 

 the mass of Sciences and Arts, that from the mass which is at hand 

 they take and search for nothing more than they can turn to their 

 professional ends, or to gain, or to reputation, or to advantages of 

 that kind. And if there be any one out of so great a multitude who 

 seeks out Science from a sincere affection and for its own sake, still 

 even he will be found to aim at a variety of contemplations and 

 teachings, rather than a severe and rigid inquiry after truth. Again, 

 if any one happen to be a stricter searcher after truth, yet even he will 

 propose to himself such a condition of truth as may satisfy his mind 

 and intellect in rendering causes for things known long ago, and not 

 one which may attain new assurances of results, and a new light of 

 Axioms ; if. then, the end of knowledge has not hitherto been rightly 

 laid down by any one, it is not strange that error ensues in what is 

 subordinate to the end. 



Ixxxii. And as men have misplaced the end and goal of the Sciences, 

 so again, even if it had been rightly placed, yet they have chosen for 

 themselves a way entirely erroneous and impassable. And it will 

 strike with astonishment the mind of any one who rightly considers 

 the matter, that no one has had the care or the heart to open and lay 

 out for the human Intellect a rightly-ordered and well-constructed way 

 from actual sense and experience, but that all has been left either to 

 the darkness of traditions, or to the whirl and eddy of arguments, or 

 to the fluctuations and windings of chance and of vague and ill- 

 digested experience. Now, let any one consider, soberly and dili 

 gently, what sort of a way it is which men have been wont to adopt in 

 the investigation and discovery of any matter ; and he will first 

 remark, no doubt, the simple and unworkmanlike character of the 

 method which is most common among us. It is simply this, that when 

 a man proposes and addresses himscif to discover anything, he first 

 inquires and unfolds what has been said about it by others ; then he 

 adds his own reflections, and with much agitation of mind solicits 

 and, as it were, invokes his own spirit to open its oracles to him--a 

 proceeding altogether without foundation, and completely dependent 

 upon opinions. 



