Bacon's System

¹²² People might object that we banishing all authorities and sciences with one stroke without the help of the ancients.

However, we trust the evidence of facts.

So we reject every kind of fiction and imposture.

We think it of no more consequence to our subject, whether future discoveries were known to the ancients, and set or rose according to the vicissitudes of events and[98] lapse of ages, than it would be of importance to mankind to know whether the new world be the island of Atlantis,[66] and known to the ancients, or be now discovered for the first time.

Our universal censure is both more probable and more modest than any partial one could have been.

For if the errors had not been rooted in the primary notions, some well conducted discoveries must have corrected others that were deficient.

But since the errors were fundamental, and of such a nature, that men may be said rather to have neglected or passed over things, than to have formed a wrong or false judgment of them, it is little to be wondered at, that they did not obtain what they never aimed at, nor arrive at a goal which they had not determined, nor perform a course which they had neither entered upon nor adhered to.

With regard to our presumption, we allow that if we were to assume a power of drawing a more perfect straight line or circle than any one else, by superior steadiness of hand or acuteness of eye, it would lead to a comparison of talent; but if one merely assert that he can draw a more perfect line or circle with a ruler or compasses, than another can by his unassisted hand or eye, he surely cannot be said to boast of much.

This applies to:

• our first original attempt
• those who shall hereafter apply themselves to the pursuit.

Our method of discovering the sciences merely:

• levels men’s wits
• leaves but little to their superiority

This is because it achieves everything by the most certain rules and demonstrations.

Our attempt is:

• to be attributed to fortune rather than talent
• the offspring of time rather than of wit.

A kind of chance has no less effect upon our thoughts than on our acts and deeds.

¹²³ There is a joke that “water and wine drinkers could not think alike,[67] especially as it hits the matter so well'.

We may apply this to ourselves.

The ancients and moderns have in the sciences drank a crude liquor like water, either:

• flowing of itself from the understanding, or
• drawn up by logic as the wheel draws up the bucket.

But we drink and pledge others with a liquor made of many well-ripened grapes, collected and plucked from particular branches, squeezed in the press, and at last clarified and fermented in a vessel. It is not, therefore, wonderful that we should not agree with others.

¹²⁴ We have not ourselves established a correct, or the best goal of the sciences. This defect we blame in others.

They will say that:

• the contemplation of truth is more dignified and exalted than any utility of effects
• our dwelling so long and anxiously on experience and matter, and the fluctuating state of particulars, causes our minds to:
  • to fall into the earth into confusion and disturbance
  • be separated from a divine state of quiet, abstract wisdom.

We agree.

We are founding a real model of the world in the understanding as it is found to be, not as it is distorted by man’s reason.[100]

This cannot be done without dissecting and anatomizing the world most diligently.

• But we declare it necessary to destroy completely the vain, little and apish imitations of the world.

These imitations were formed in various systems of philosophy by men’s fancies.

Humans should learn the difference between:

• the idols of the human mind and
• the ideas of the divine mind.

The former are mere arbitrary abstractions. The latter are the true marks of the Creator on his creatures, as they are imprinted on, and defined in matter, by true and exquisite touches.

Truth and utility, therefore, are here perfectly identical. The effects are more valueable as pledges of truth rather than as practical benefits.

Objections

¹²⁵ Others may object that we are only doing what has already been done by the ancients.

They may imagine that we will end up with the same systems of that the ancients had.

The ancients too:

• began their meditations
• laid up instances and particulars
• digested them under topics and titles in their commonplace books
• worked out their systems and arts
• decided on what they discovered
• related now and then some examples to confirm their doctrine

They thought it superfluous and troublesome to publish their notes, minutes, and commonplaces.

• They followed the example of builders who remove the scaffolding and ladders when the building is finished.

We reply that:

• the ancients had a particular form of investigation and discovery
• their writings show it.

But the problem was that they:

• immediately flew from a few instances and particulars to the most general principles of the sciences
• then by their intermediate propositions deduced their inferior conclusions
• then tried them by the test of the immovable truth of the first, and so constructed their art.

If some new contradictory instances were brought forward, they either with great subtilty:

• reduced them to one system by explanations of their own rules, or
• got rid of them clumsily as exceptions

They labored to explain that the causes of such as were not contradictory to their own principles.

Their natural history and their experience were both far from being what they should have been.

Their flying off to generalities ruined everything.

¹²⁶ Another objection is that we prohibit decisions and the laying down of certain principles, till we arrive regularly at generalities by the intermediate steps.

• In this way we keep the judgment in suspense and uncertain.

But our object is certainty, not uncertainty. We:

• derogate not from the senses but assist them, and
• despise not the understanding but direct it.

It is better to know what is necessary, and not to imagine we are fully in possession of it, than to imagine that we are fully in possession of it, and yet really know nothing.