affairs so much time as was required for this work. I know not what to
say for myself. For of time there can be no restitution, unless it be
that what has been abstracted from your business may perhaps go to the
memory of your name and the honour of your age; if these things are
indeed worth anything. Certainly they are quite new; totally new in
their very kind: and yet they are copied from a very ancient model;
even the world itself and the nature of things and of the mind. And to
say truth, I am wont for my own part to regard this work as a child of
time rather than of wit; the only wonder being that the first notion
of the thing, and such great suspicions concerning matters long
established, should have come into any man's mind. All the rest
follows readily enough. And no doubt there is something of accident
(as we call it) and luck as well in what men think as in what they do
or say. But for this accident which I speak of, I wish that if
there be any good in what I have to offer, it may be ascribed to
the infinite mercy and goodness of God, and to the felicity of your
Majesty's times; to which as I have been an honest and affectionate
servant in my life, so after my death I may yet perhaps, through the
kindling of this new light in the darkness of philosophy, be the means
of making this age famous to posterity; and surely to the times of the
wisest and most learned of kings belongs of right the regeneration
and restoration of the sciences. Lastly, I have a request to make--a
request no way unworthy of your Majesty, and which especially concerns
the work in hand; namely, that you who resemble Solomon in so many
things--in the gravity of your judgments, in the peacefulness of your
reign, in the largeness of your heart, in the noble variety of the
books which you have composed--would further follow his example
in taking order for the collecting and perfecting of a Natural and
Experimental History, true and severe (unincumbered with literature
and book-learning), such as philosophy may be built upon,--such, in
fact, as I shall in its proper place describe: that so at length,
after the lapse of so many ages, philosophy and the sciences may no
longer float in air, but rest on the solid foundation of experience
of every kind, and the same well examined and weighed. I have provided
the machine, but the stuff must be gathered from the facts of nature.
May God Almighty long preserve your Majesty!
Your Majesty's
Most bounden and devoted Servant,
FRANCIS VERULAM,
Chancellor.
PREFACE
TO THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA
_That the state of knowledge is not prosperous nor greatly advancing;
and that a way must be opened for the human understanding entirely
different from any hitherto known, and other helps provided, in order
that the mind may exercise over the nature of things the authority
which properly belongs to it._
It seems to me that men do not rightly understand either their store
or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the other. Hence
it follows, that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of
the arts which they possess, they seek no further; or else from too
mean an estimate of their own powers, they spend their strength in
small matters and never put it fairly to the trial in those which
go to the main. These are as the pillars of fate set in the path of
knowledge; for men have neither desire nor hope to encourage them
to penetrate further. And since opinion of store is one of the chief
causes of want, and satisfaction with the present induces neglect
of provision for the future, it becomes a thing not only useful, but
absolutely necessary, that the excess of honour and admiration with
which our existing stock of inventions is regarded be in the very
entrance and threshold of the work, and that frankly and without
circumlocution, stripped off, and men be duly warned not to exaggerate
or make too much of them. For let a man look carefully into all that
variety of books with which the arts and sciences abound, he will
find everywhere endless repetitions of the same thing, varying in the
method of treatment, but not new in substance, insomuch that the whole
stock, numerous as it appears at first view, proves on examination to
be but scanty. And for its value and utility it must be plainly avowed
that that wisdom which we have derived principally from the Greeks is
but like the boyhood of knowledge, and has the characteristic property
of boys; it can talk, but it cannot generate; for it is fruitful of
controversies but barren of works. So that the state of learning as
it now is appears to be represented to the life in the old fable of
Scylla, who had the head and face of a virgin, but her womb was hung
round with barking monsters, from which she could not be delivered.
For in like manner the sciences to which we are accustomed have
certain general positions which are specious and flattering; but
as soon as they come to particulars, which are as the parts of
generation, when they should produce fruit and works, then arise
contentions and barking disputations, which are the end of the matter
and all the issue they can yield. Observe also, that if sciences of
this kind had any life in them, that could never have come to pass
which has been the case now for many ages--that they stand almost at
a stay, without receiving any augmentations worthy of the human race;
insomuch that many times not only what was asserted once is asserted
still, but what was a question once is a question still, and instead
of being resolved by discussion is only fixed and fed; and all the
tradition and succession of schools is still a succession of masters
and scholars, not of inventors and those who bring to further
perfection the things invented. In the mechanical arts we do not find
it so; they, on the contrary, as having in them some breath of life,
are continually growing and becoming more perfect. As originally
invented they are commonly rude, clumsy, and shapeless; afterwards
they acquire new powers and more commodious arrangements and
constructions; in so far that men shall sooner leave the study and
pursuit of them and turn to something else, than they arrive at the
ultimate perfection of which they are capable. Philosophy and the
intellectual sciences, on the contrary, stand like statues, worshiped
and celebrated, but not moved or advanced. Nay, they sometimes
flourish most in the hands of the first author, and afterwards
degenerate. For when men have once made over their judgments to
others' keeping, and (like those senators whom they called _Pedarii_)
have agreed to support some one person's opinion, from that time
they make no enlargement of the sciences themselves, but fall to
the servile office of embellishing certain individual authors and
increasing their retinue. And let it not be said that the sciences
have been growing gradually till they have at last reached their full
stature, and so (their course being completed) have settled in the
works of a few writers; and that there being now no room for the
invention of better, all that remains is to embellish and cultivate
those things which have been invented already. Would it were so! But
the truth is that this appropriating of the sciences has its origin in
nothing better than the confidence of a few persons and the sloth
and indolence of the rest. For after the sciences had been in several
parts perhaps cultivated and handled diligently, there has risen up
some man of bold disposition, and famous for methods and short ways
which people like, who has in appearance reduced them to an art, while
he has in fact only spoiled all that the others had done. And yet this
is what posterity like, because it makes the work short and easy, and
saves further inquiry, of which they are weary and impatient. And if
any one take this general acquiescence and consent for an argument
of weight, as being the judgment of Time, let me tell him that the
reasoning on which he relies is most fallacious and weak. For, first,
we are far from knowing all that in the matter of sciences and arts
has in various ages and places been brought to light and published;
much less, all that has been by private persons secretly attempted
and stirred, so neither the births nor the miscarriages of Time are
entered in our records. Nor, secondly, is the consent itself and
the time it has continued a consideration of much worth. For however
various are the forms of civil politics, there is but one form of
polity in the sciences; and that always has been and always will be
popular. Now the doctrines which find most favour with the populace
are those which are either contentious and pugnacious, or specious
and empty; such, I say, as either entangle assent or tickle it. And
therefore no doubt the greatest wits in each successive age have been
forced out of their own course, men of capacity and intellect above
the vulgar having been fain, for reputation's sake, to bow to the
judgment of the time and the multitude; and thus if any contemplations
of a higher order took light anywhere, they were presently blown out
by the winds of vulgar opinions. So that Time is like a river, which
has brought down to us things light and puffed up, while those which
are weighty and solid have sunk. Nay, those very authors who have
usurped a kind of dictatorship in the sciences and taken upon them to
lay down the law with such confidence, yet when from time to time they
come to themselves again, they fall to complaints of the subtlety
of nature, the hiding-places of truth, the obscurity of things,
the entanglement of causes, the weakness of the human mind; wherein
nevertheless they show themselves never the more modest, seeing that
they will rather lay the blame upon the common condition of man
and nature than upon themselves. And then whatever any art fails to
attain, they ever set it down upon the authority of that art itself as
impossible of attainment; and how can art be found guilty when it is
judge in its own cause? So it is but a device for exempting ignorance
from ignominy. Now for those things which are delivered and received,
this is their condition: barren of works, full of questions; in point
of enlargement slow and languid; carrying a show of perfection in
the whole, but in the parts ill filled up; in selection popular, and
unsatisfactory even to those who propound them; and therefore fenced
round and set forth with sundry artifices. And if there be any who
have determined to make trial for themselves, and put their own
strength to the work of advancing the boundaries of the sciences,
yet have they not ventured to cast themselves completely loose from
received opinions or to seek their knowledge at the fountain; but they
think they have done some great thing if they do but add and introduce
into the existing sum of science something of their own; prudently
considering with themselves that by making the addition they can
assert their liberty, while they retain the credit of modesty by
assenting to the rest. But these mediocrities and middle ways so
much praised, in deferring to opinions and customs, turn to the great
detriment of the sciences. For it is hardly possible at once to admire
an author and to go beyond him; knowledge being as water, which
will not rise above the level from which it fell. Men of this kind,
therefore, amend some things, but advance little; and improve the
condition of knowledge, but do not extend its range. Some, indeed,
there have been who have gone more boldly to work, and taking it all
for an open matter and giving their genius full play, have made a
passage for themselves and their own opinions by pulling down and
demolishing former ones; and yet all their stir has but little
advanced the matter; since their aim has been not to extend philosophy
and the arts in substance and value, but only to change doctrines and
transfer the kingdom of opinions to themselves; whereby little has
indeed been gained, for though the error be the opposite of the other,
the causes of erring are the same in both. And if there have been any
who, not binding themselves either to other men's opinions or to their
own, but loving liberty, have desired to engage others along with
themselves in search, these, though honest in intention, have been
weak in endeavour. For they have been content to follow probable
reasons, and are carried round in a whirl of arguments, and in the
promiscuous liberty of search have relaxed the severity of inquiry.
There is none who has dwelt upon experience and the facts of nature
as long as is necessary. Some there are indeed who have committed
themselves to the waves of experience, and almost turned mechanics;
yet these again have in their very experiments pursued a kind of
wandering inquiry, without any regular system of operations. And
besides they have mostly proposed to themselves certain petty tasks,
taking it for a great matter to work out some single discovery;--a
course of proceeding at once poor in aim and unskilful in design. For
no man can rightly and successfully investigate the nature of anything
in the thing itself; let him vary his experiments as laboriously as he
will, he never comes to a resting-place, but still finds something to
seek beyond. And there is another thing to be remembered; namely,
that all industry in experimenting has begun with proposing to itself
certain definite works to be accomplished, and has pursued them
with premature and unseasonable eagerness; it has sought, I say,
experiments of Fruit, not experiments of Light; not Imitating the
divine procedure, which In its first day's work created light only and
assigned to it one entire day; on which day it produced no material
work, but proceeded to that on the days following. As for those who
have given the first place to Logic, supposing that the surest helps
to the sciences were to be found in that, they have indeed most truly
and excellently perceived that the human intellect left to its own
course is not to be trusted; but then the remedy is altogether too
weak for the disease; nor is it without evil in itself. For the
Logic which is received, though it be very properly applied to civil
business and to those arts which rest in discourse and opinion, is not
nearly subtle enough to deal with nature; and in offering at what it
cannot master, has done more to establish and perpetuate error than to
open the way to truth.
Upon the whole therefore, it seems that men have not been happy
hitherto either in the trust which they have placed in others or in
their own industry with regard to the sciences; especially as neither
the demonstrations nor the experiments as yet known are much to be
relied upon. But the universe to the eye of the human understanding is
framed like a labyrinth; presenting as it does on every side so many
ambiguities of way, such deceitful resemblances of objects and signs,
natures so irregular in their lines, and so knotted and entangled. And
then the way is still to be made by the uncertain light of the sense,
sometimes shining out, sometimes clouded over, through the woods
of experience and particulars; while those who offer themselves for
guides are (as was said) themselves also puzzled, and increase the
number of errors and wanderers. In circumstances so difficult neither
the natural force of man's judgment nor even any accidental felicity
offers any chance of success. No excellence of wit, no repetition of
chance experiments, can overcome such difficulties as these. Our
steps must be guided by a clue, and the whole way from the very first
perception of the senses must be laid out upon a sure plan. Not that I
would be understood to mean that nothing whatever has been done in so
many ages by so great labours. We have no reason to be ashamed of the
discoveries which have been made, and no doubt the ancients proved
themselves in everything that turns on wit and abstract meditation,
wonderful men. But as in former ages when men sailed only by
observation of the stars, they could indeed coast along the shores
of the old continent or cross a few small and mediterranean seas; but
before the ocean could be traversed and the new world discovered, the
use of the mariner's needle, as a more faithful and certain guide,
had to be found out; in like manner the discoveries which have been
hitherto made in the arts and sciences are such as might be made by
practice, meditation, observation, argumentation,--for they lay near
to the senses, and immediately beneath common notions; but before we
can reach the remoter and more hidden parts of nature, it is necessary
that a more perfect use and application of the human mind and
intellect be introduced.
For my own part at least, in obedience to the everlasting love of
truth, I have committed myself to the uncertainties and difficulties
and solitudes of the ways, and relying on the divine assistance have
upheld my mind both against the shocks and embattled ranks of opinion,
and against my own private and inward hesitations and scruples, and
against the fogs and clouds of nature, and the phantoms flitting about
on every side; in the hope of providing at last for the present and
future generations guidance more faithful and secure. Wherein if I
have made any progress, the way has been opened to me by no other
means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human spirit.
For all those who before me have applied themselves to the invention
of arts have but cast a glance or two upon facts and examples and
experience, and straightway proceeded, as if invention were nothing
more than an exercise of thought, to invoke their own spirits to give
them oracles. I, on the contrary, dwelling purely and constantly among
the facts of nature, withdraw my intellect from them no further than
may suffice to let the images and rays of natural objects meet in a
point, as they do in the sense of vision; whence it follows that the
strength and excellency of the wit has but little to do in the matter.
And the same humility which I use in inventing I employ likewise in
teaching. For I do not endeavour either by triumphs of confutation,
or pleadings of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even by
the veil of obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any
majesty; which might easily be done by one who sought to give lustre
to his own name rather than light to other men's minds. I have
not sought (I say) nor do I seek either to force or ensnare men's
judgments, but I lead them to things themselves and the concordances
of things, that they may see for themselves what they have, what they
can dispute, what they can add and contribute to the common stock.
And for myself, if in anything I have been either too credulous or
too little awake and attentive, or if I have fallen off by the way and
left the inquiry incomplete, nevertheless I so present these things
naked and open, that my errors can be marked and set aside before the
mass of knowledge be further infected by them; and it will be easy
also for others to continue and carry on my labours. And by these
means I suppose that I have established for ever a true and lawful
marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty, the unkind
and ill-starred divorce and separation of which has thrown into
confusion all the affairs of the human family.
Wherefore, seeing that these things do not depend upon myself, at the
outset of the work I most humbly and fervently pray to God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, that remembering the sorrows of
mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life wherein we wear out days
few and evil, they will vouchsafe through my hands to endow the human
family with new mercies. This likewise I humbly pray, that things
human may not interfere with things divine, and that from the opening
of the ways of sense and the increase of natural light there may arise
in our minds no incredulity or darkness with regard to the divine
mysteries; but rather that the understanding being thereby purified
and purged of fancies and vanity, and yet not the less subject and
entirely submissive to the divine oracles, may give to faith that
which is faith's. Lastly, that knowledge being now discharged of that
venom which the serpent infused into it, and which makes the mind
of man to swell, we may not be wise above measure and sobriety, but
cultivate truth in charity.
And now having said my prayers I turn to men; to whom I have certain
salutary admonitions to offer and certain fair requests to make. My
first admonition (which was also my prayer) is that men confine the
sense within the limits of duty in respect to things divine: for the
sense is like the sun, which reveals the face of earth, but seals and
shuts up the face of heaven. My next, that in flying from this evil
they fall not into the opposite error, which they will surely do if
they think that the inquisition of nature is in any part interdicted
or forbidden. For it was not that pure and uncorrupted natural
knowledge whereby Adam gave names to the creatures according to their
propriety, which gave occasion to the fall. It was the ambitious and
proud desire of moral knowledge to judge of good and evil, to the end
that man may revolt from God and give laws to himself, which was
the form and manner of the temptation. Whereas of the sciences which
regard nature, the divine philosopher declares that "it is the glory
of God to conceal a thing, but it is the glory of the King to find
a thing out," Even as though the divine nature took pleasure in the
innocent and kindly sport of children playing at hide and seek, and
vouchsafed of his kindness and goodness to admit the human spirit
for his playfellow at that game. Lastly, I would address one general
admonition to all; that they consider what are the true ends of
knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind,
or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or
fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefit
and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity. For
it was from lust of power that the angels fell, from lust of knowledge
that man fell; but of charity there can be no excess, neither did
angel or man ever come in danger by it.
The requests I have to make are these. Of myself I say nothing; but in
behalf of the business which is in hand I entreat men to believe that
it is not an opinion to be held, but a work to be done; and to be well
assured that I am labouring to lay the foundation, not of any sect
or doctrine, but of human utility and power. Next, I ask them to deal
fairly by their own interests, and laying aside all emulations and
prejudices in favour of this or that opinion, to join in consultation
for the common good; and being now freed and guarded by the securities
and helps which I offer from the errors and impediments of the way, to
come forward themselves and take part in that which remains to be done
Moreover, to be of good hope, nor to imagine that this Instauration
of mine is a thing infinite and beyond the power of man, when it is in
fact the true end and termination of infinite error, and seeing also
that it is by no means forgetful of the conditions of mortality and
humanity, (for it does not suppose that the work can be altogether
completed within one generation, but provides for its being taken up
by another), and finally that it seeks for the sciences not arrogantly
in the little cells of human wit, but with reverence in the greater
world. But it is the empty things that are vast things solid are most
contracted and lie in little room. And now I have only one favour
more to ask (else injustice to me may perhaps imperil the business
itself)--that men will consider well how far, upon that which I must
needs assert (if I am to be consistent with myself), they are entitled
to judge and decide upon these doctrines of mine, inasmuch as all that
premature human reasoning which anticipates inquiry, and is abstracted
from the facts rashly and sooner than is fit, is by me rejected (so
far as the inquisition of nature is concerned), as a thing uncertain,
confused, and ill built up, and I cannot be fairly asked to abide by
the decision of a tribunal which is itself on its trial.
THE PLAN OF THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA
The work is in six Parts:--
1. _The Divisions of the Sciences_.
2. _The New Organon; or Directions concerning the
Interpretation of Nature_.
3. _The Phenomena of the Universe; or a Natural and
Experimental History for the foundation of
Philosophy_.
4. _The Ladder of the Intellect_.
5. _The Forerunners; or Anticipations of the New
Philosophy_.
6. _The New Philosophy; or Active Science_.
_The Arguments of the several Parts_.
It being part of my design to set everything forth, as far as may
be, plainly and perspicuously (for nakedness of the mind is still,
as nakedness of the body once was, the companion of innocence and
simplicity), let me first explain the order and plan of the work. I
distribute it into six parts.
The first part exhibits a summary or general description of the
knowledge which the human race at present possesses. For I thought it
good to make some pause upon that which is received; that thereby
the old may be more easily made perfect and the new more easily
approached. And I hold the improvement of that which we have to be as
much an object as the acquisition of more. Besides which it will make
me the better listened to; for "He that is ignorant (says the proverb)
receives not the words of knowledge, unless thou first tell him that
which is in his own heart." We will therefore make a coasting voyage
along the shores of the arts and sciences received; not without
importing into them some useful things by the way.