282 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



which are prohibited by no such law. Others, with greater cunning, 

 consider and reflect that if intermediate causes be unknown, each 

 occurrence can be more easily referred to the Divine hand and rod 

 (which they consider to be of great importance in Religion) ; which 

 is nothing else but seeking to &quot;gratify God by a lie.&quot; Others fear, 

 from what has already happened, that the movements and changes of 

 Philosophy may end by assaulting Religion. Others, again, seem 

 anxious lest anything should be discovered during the investigation of 

 Nature which may subvert Religion (especially among the unlearned), 

 or at least shake its authority. But these two last fears seem to us to 

 savour altogether of a carnal wisdom ; as if men, in the recesses of 

 their minds, and in their secret thoughts, distrusted and doubted the 

 stability of Religion, and the empire of Faith over Sense ; and there 

 fore feared that danger threatened from the inquiry after truth in 

 natural things. But, if we take the true view of the matter, Natural 

 Philosophy is, next to the Word of God, the most sure remedy for 

 superstition, and at the same time the most approved nourishment 

 for Faith. And so she is rightly given to Religion as a most faithful 

 handmaid ; the one manifesting the will of God, the other His power. 

 Nor was He wrong who said : &quot; Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, 

 and the power of God ;&quot; thus joining and coupling information con 

 cerning His will, and meditation on His power, in an inseparable bond. 

 In the mean while it is the less strange, that the growth of Natural 

 Philosophy is restrained, seeing that Religion, which has very great 

 influence over the minds of men, has, through the unskilfulness and 

 incautious zeal of certain persons, crossed over and been carried into 

 opposition. 



xc. Again, in the customs and institutions of schools, academies, 

 colleges, and similar places of resort, set apart as the abodes of 

 learned men, and for the cultivation of erudition, everything is found 

 to be hostile to the progress of knowledge. For lectures and exercises 

 are so disposed, that it does not easily occur to any one to think or 

 meditate on anything out of the customary routine. And if one or 

 two have perchance the boldness to exercise liberty of judgment, they 

 must undertake the task by themselves, for they will gain no advan 

 tage from union with others. And if they can endure this, still they 

 will find their industry and liberality no slight impediment in reaching 

 fortune. For the pursuits of men in places of this kind are confined 

 to the writings of certain authors, as if they were prisons ; and if any 

 one dissents from them, he is straightway seized upon as a turbulent 

 man, and one desirous of innovations. But surely there is a great 

 distinction between civil matters and the Arts, for the danger from a 

 new movement and from a new light is not the same. In civil 

 matters, a change even for the better is suspected as the probable 

 cause of disturbance ; since civil matters rest on authority, consent, 

 report, and opinion, not on demonstration. But in the Arts and 

 Sciences, as in mines, all around ought to echo with the sound of new 

 works and further progress. And such is the case according to right 

 reason ; but meanwhile it is not carried out in practice ; that adminis- 



