NOW At ORGAXUM. 277 



itself is modern ami younger. And truly, as we expect a greater 

 knowledge of human affairs and a riper judgment from an old man 

 than from a young one, on account of his experience and of the variety 

 and abundance of the things which he has seen and heard and thought 

 upon, so in like manner also from our age (if it knew its own strength, 

 and chose to essay and exert it) it is fair to expect far greater things 

 than from the earlier times, inasmuch as the age of the world is 

 greater, and has been enriched and stored by an infinite number of 

 experiments and observations. 



Nor is it to be counted as nothing, that by means of distant voyages 

 and travels, which have been frequent in our generation, very many 

 things in Nature have been laid open and discovered which may let 

 in a new light upon Philosophy. And really it would be disgraceful 

 to mankind if the regions of the material globe, viz., of the earth, of 

 the sea, and of the stars, should in our times be laid open and 

 illustrated to a very great extent, and yet the limits of the intellectual 

 globe be confined to the narrow discoveries of the ancients. 



Hut with regard to authority, it is a mark of the greatest weakness 

 to assign unbounded influence to authors, while we deny its rights to 

 time, the author of all authors, and so of all authority. For truth is 

 rightly called the daughter of time, and not of authority ; and so it is 

 not wonderful if these enchantments of antiquity, authority, and con 

 sent have so bound up the strength of men, that they have not been 

 able (being as it were bewitched) to hold familiar intercourse with 

 things themselves. 



Ixxxv. Nor is it only the admiration of antiquity, authority, and 

 consent, which has compelled the industry of mankind to rest con 

 tented with what is already discovered, but also an admiration of the 

 results themselves, of whuh the human race has long had a plentiful 

 supply. For when any one has brought within his view the variety 

 of things, and the very beautiful apparatus which has been collected 

 and introduced for the improvement of mankind by means of the 

 Mechanical Arts, he will certainly be inclined rather to admire the 

 wealth of man than to feel his poverty, never reflecting that the 

 primitive observations of man, and the operations of Natuic (which 

 arc the life and original causes of all that variety), are neither many 

 in number, nor fought from any depth ; that the rest is clue to the 

 patience of men only, and to the subtle and well-directed motion of 

 hand or instruments. For, to take an example, watch-making is i 

 subtle and exact business, inasmuch as it seems to imitate the motions 

 of the heavenly bodies by means of wheels, and the pulse of animals 

 by its successive and orderly motion ; and yet the whole thing 

 depends on one or two axioms of Nature. 



If, again, any one looks into the subtlety which pervades the 

 Liberal Arts, or even that which exists in the preparation of natural 

 bodies by the Mechanical Arts, and takes in hand subjects of this 

 sort : such as the discovery of the celestial motions in astronomy, of 

 harmony in music, of letters of the alphabet (which even up to the 

 present time arc not in use in the Chinese Umpire) in grammar ; or 



