280 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



no means strange that a great prejudice should be caused against new 

 propositions (especially when accompanied by allusion to results) on 

 account of those impostors who have attempted the like ; since their 

 excessive vanity and fastidiousness have, even in the present day, 

 destroyed all greatness of mind in attempts of this kind. 



Ixxxviii. But far greater injury has been inflicted on the Sciences 

 by meanness of spirit, and the smallness and lightness of the tasks 

 which human industry has proposed to itself. And yet (which is 

 worst of all) that meanness of spirit does not present itself without 

 arrogance and disdain. 



For, first, we find, in connection with all Arts, the caution, already 

 familiar to us, with which the authors turn the weakness of their 

 several Arts into a charge against Nature ; and that when a thing is 

 not attainable by their Art, they pronounce it, on the authority of that 

 same Art, to be impossible in Nature. And certainly Art cannot be 

 condemned if she be her own judge. Indeed, the Philosophy, at pre 

 sent in vogue, cherishes in her breast certain positions or opinions, 

 the object of which is (if a diligent inquiry be made) to persuade men 

 that nothing difficult, or involving power and influence over Nature, 

 ought to be expected from Art, or the operation of man ; as was said 

 above with respect to the heterogeny of Heat when derived from 

 sidereal bodies or from fire, and concerning Mixture. But if these 

 things be accurately noted, they are found to tend entirely to a wilful 

 circumscription of human power, and to a contrived and factitious 

 despair ; which not only disturbs the auguries of hope, but also cuts 

 into all the spurs and sinews of industry, and rejects the chances of 

 Experience herself; and all to the end that their Art may be thought 

 perfect, and that they may enjoy the most empty and pernicious boast 

 that whatever has been hitherto undiscovered or uncomprehended 

 is altogether beyond the possibility of discovery and comprehension 

 for the future. And if any one tries to set himself to work, and to 

 make some new discovery, still he will absolutely propose and appoint 

 to himself to investigate and bring out some single discovery, and no 

 more : as the nature of the magnet, the flowing and ebbing of the sea, 

 the system of the heavens, and things of this kind, which seem to 

 have something secret about them, and have not been happily treated 

 of hitherto. Whereas it is a mark of extreme unskilfulness to investi 

 gate the nature of anything in the thing itself, inasmuch as the same 

 Nature which in some things seems to be latent and hidden, in others 

 is manifest and, as it were, tangible ; in the former cases exciting 

 admiration, in the latter not even common attention. As happens in 

 the nature of &quot;Consistency/ which is not marked in wood or stone, 

 but is passed over under the name of solidity, without any further 

 inquiry being made as to the repulsion of separation, or the solution 

 of continuity ; whereas in the case of bubbles of water the same thing 

 seems subtle and ingenious, the bubbles throwing themselves into 

 certain pellicles, curiously fashioned into the shape of a hemisphere, 

 so that for a moment the solution of continuity is avoided. 



And certainly those same things which are regarded as secret have 



