286 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



they must be raised in due order from Experience, and built up anew ; 

 and no one, we imagine, will venture to affirm that this has been 

 hitherto done, or even thought of. 



xcviii. And the grounds of Experience (for we must always come 

 down to this) either do not exist, or have as yet been very weak ; nor 

 has there yet been any search made after a store or collection of 

 particulars, fit either in number, in kind, or in certainty, to form the 

 Intellect, or in any way sufficient. On the contrary, men of learning 

 (but supine and easy) have taken up, for the construction and consti 

 tution of their Philosophy, certain rumours, and, as it were, reports 

 and breezes of Experience, and have allowed to them the weight of 

 legitimate testimony. And just as if some kingdom or state were to 

 direct its counsels and business not by the letters and reports of its 

 ambassadors and trustworthy messengers, but by the gossip of citizens 

 and tattle from the streets, so in all respects has been the manage 

 ment introduced into Philosophy, as far as regards Experience. 

 Nothing duly inquired into, nothing verified, nothing counted, nothing 

 weighed, nothing measured, is found in Natural History. But that 

 which in observation is indefinite and vague, is in information 

 fallacious and untrustworthy. And if these statements seem to any one 

 strange, and bordering on injustice, since Aristotle, a man so great in 

 himself, and supported by the riches of so great a king, completed so 

 accurate a history of animals; and some others, with greater diligence, 

 though with less noise, have made many additions thereto ; and others, 

 again, have composed copious histories and relations of plants, metals, 

 and fossils ; he really does not seem sufficiently to attend to and to 

 discern the business in hand. For there is one kind of Natural 

 History which is composed for its own sake ; another which is 

 collected to inform the Intellect, with a view to the construction of a 

 Philosophy. And these two histories, among many points of difference, 

 possess this principal one, that the first contains the variety of natural 

 species, and not the Experiments of the Mechanical Arts. For as in 

 civil matters the ability of each man, and the secret bias of his mind 

 and affections are best elicited in times of trouble ; so the secrets of 

 Nature reveal themselves better under the vexations of the Arts than 

 when they wander on in their own course. And so, then, there will be 

 grounds of hope for Natural Philosophy when Natural History (which 

 is its base and foundation) has been better arranged, but not till then. 



xcix. And again, in the very abundance of Mechanical Experiments 

 is disclosed the extreme scarcity of those which most aid the informa 

 tion of the Intellect. For the mechanic, not at all anxious about the 

 investigation of truth, will not raise his mind or stretch out his hand 

 to anything that does not help on his own work. But hope of the 

 further progress of the Sciences will be well founded when there shall 

 be admitted and gathered up into Natural History very many Experi 

 ments, which, though of no use in themselves, do so much towards 

 the discovery of causes and Axioms ; and these we have been wont to 

 call &quot;light-bearing&quot; Experiments, to distinguish them from those that 

 are &quot; fruit-bearing.&quot; For they have in them a wonderful virtue and 



