path to be pursued. The Lame (as they say) in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it, and it is clear that the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not in the right direction must increase his aberration.

Our method of discovering the Sciences is such as to leave little to the acuteness and strength of wit, and indeed rather to level wit and Intellect. For as in the drawing of a straight line, or accurate circle by the hand, much depends on its steadiness and practice, but if a ruler or compass be employed there is little occasion for either; so it is with our method. Although, however, we enter into no individual confutations, yet a little must be said, first, of the sects and general divisions of these species of theories; secondly, something further to show that there are external signs of their weakness; and, lastly, we must consider the causes of so great a misfortune, and so long and general a unanimity in error, that we may thus render the access to truth less difficult, and that the human Understanding may the more readily be purified, and brought to dismiss its Idols.

Ixii. The Idols of the Theatre or of Theories are numerous, and may and perhaps will be still more so. For unless men's minds had been now occupied for many ages in religious and Theological considerations, and Civil Governments (especially Monarchies) had been adverse to novelties of that nature even in theory (so that men must apply to them with some risk and injury to their own fortunes, and not only without reward but subject to contumely and envy,) there is no doubt that many other sects of Philosophers and Theorists would have been introduced, like those which formerly flourished in such diversified abundance amongst the Greeks. For as many imaginary theories of the heavens can be deduced from the Phenomena of the sky, so is it even more easy to found many Dogmas upon the Phenomena of Philosophy-and the plot of this our Theatre resembles those of the Poetical, where the plots which are invented

for the Stage are more consistent, elegant, and pleasurable than those taken from real history.

In general men take for the groundwork of their Philosophy either too much from a few topics, or too little from many; in either case their Philosophy is founded on too narrow a basis of experiment and natural history, and decides on too scanty grounds. For the theoretic philosopher seizes various common circumstances by experiment, without reducing them to certainty or examining or frequently considering them, and relies for the rest upon meditation and the activity of his wit.

There are other Philosophers who have diligently and accurately attended to a few experiments, and have thence presumed to deduce and invent systems of Philosophy, forming every thing to conformity with them.

A third set from their faith and religious veneration introduce Theology and traditions; the absurdity of some among them having proceeded so far, as to seek and derive the Sciences from Spirits and Genii. There are therefore three sources of error and three species of False Philosophy; the Sophistic, Empiric, and Superstitious.

lxiii. Aristotle affords the most eminent instance of the first for he corrupted Natural Philosophy by Logic-thus he formed the World of Categories, assigned to the human soul, the noblest of substances, a genus determined by words of secondary operation, treated of density and rarity (by which bodies occupy a greater or lesser space) by the frigid distinctions of Action and Power, asserted that there was a peculiar and proper motion in all bodies, and that if they shared in any other motion, it was owing to an external moving cause, and imposed innumerable arbitrary distinctions upon the Nature of things; being every where more anxious as to definitions in teaching and the accuracy of the wording of his propositions, than the internal truth of things. And this is best shown by a comparison of his

Philosophy with the others of greatest repute among the Greeks. For the Similar Parts of Anaxagoras, the Atoms of Leucippus and Democritus, the Heaven and Earth of Parmenides, the Discord and Concord of Empedocles, the Resolution of bodies into the common nature of Fire, and their Condensation according to Heraclitus, exhibit some sprinkling of natural Philosophy, the nature of things, and experiment; whilst Aristotle's Physics are mere Logical terms, and he remodelled the same subject in his Metaphysics under a more imposing title, and more as a Realist than a Nominalist. Nor is much stress to be laid on his frequent recourse to experiment in his books on Animals, his Problems, and other treatises; for he had already decided, without having properly consulted experience as the basis of his Decisions and Axioms, and after having so decided, he drags experiment along as a captive constrained to accommodate herself to his decisions : so that he is even more to be blamed, than his modern followers (of the Scholastic School) who have deserted her altogether.

Ixiv. The Empiric School produces dogmas of a more deformed and monstrous nature than the Sophistic or theoretic school not being founded in the light of common notions (which, however poor and superficial, is yet in a manner universal and of a general tendency), but in the confined obscurity of a few experiments. Hence this species of Philosophy appears probable and almost certain to those who are daily practised in such experiments, and have thus corrupted their imagination, but incredible and futile to others. We have a strong instance of this in the Alchymists and their dogmas; it would be difficult to find another in this age, unless perhaps in the Philosophy of Gilbert. We could not however neglect to caution others

It is thus the Vulcanists and Neptunians have framed their opposite theories in geology. Phrenology is a modern instance of hasty generalization.

against this School, because we already foresee and augur, that if men be hereafter induced by our exhortations to apply seriously to experiments (bidding farewell to the Sophistic doctrines), there will then be imminent danger from empirics, owing to the premature and forward haste of the Understanding and its jumping or flying to generalities and the principles of things. We ought therefore already to meet the evil.

lxv. The Corruption of Philosophy by the mixing of it up with Superstition and Theology is of a much wider extent, and is most injurious to it both as a whole and in parts. For the human Understanding is no less exposed to the impressions of Fancy, than to those of vulgar notions. The disputatious and Sophistic School entraps the Understanding, whilst the fanciful, bombastic, and as it were Poetical school rather flatters it. There is a clear example of this among the Greeks, especially in Pythagoras, where however the Superstition is coarse and overcharged, but it is more dangerous and refined in Plato and his school. This evil is found also in some branches of other systems of Philosophy, where it introduces abstracted forms, final and first causes, omitting frequently the intermediate, and the like. Against it we must use the greatest caution; for the Apotheosis of error is the greatest evil of all, and when folly is worshipped, it is, as it were, a plague spot upon the Understanding. Yet some of the moderns have indulged this folly with such consummate inconsiderateness, that they have endeavoured to build a system of natural Philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and other parts of Scripture ; seeking thus the dead amongst the living. And this folly is the more to be prevented and restrained, because not only fantastical Philosophy but heretical Religion spring from the absurd mixing of matters Divine and Human. It is therefore most wise soberly to render unto faith the things that are faith's.

lxvi. Having spoken of the vicious authority of the Systems founded either on Vulgar notions, or on a few experiments, or on superstition, we must now consider the faulty subjects for Contemplation, especially in Natural Philosophy. The human Understanding is perverted by observing the power of Mechanical Arts, in which bodies. are very materially changed by composition or separation, and is induced to suppose that something similar takes place in the universal nature of things. Hence the fiction of Elements, and their co-operation in forming natural bodies. Again when man reflects upon the entire liberty of Nature, he meets with particular species of Things, as Animals, Plants, Minerals, and is thence easily led to imagine that there exist in Nature certain primary Forms which she strives to produce, and that all variation from them arises from some impediment or error which she is exposed to in completing her work, or from the collision or metamorphosis of different species. The first hypothesis has produced the doctrine of elementary properties, the second that of occult properties and specific powers and both lead to trifling courses of reflection, in which the mind acquiesces, and is thus diverted from more important subjects. But Physicians exercise a much more useful labour in the consideration of the secondary qualities of things and the operations of Attraction, Repulsion, Attenuation, Inspissation, Dilatation, Astringency, Separation, Maturation, and the like and would do still more if they would not corrupt these proper observations by the two systems I have alluded to, of elementary qualities and specific powers, by which they either reduce the secondary to first qualities, and their subtile and immeasurable composition, or at any rate neglect to advance by greater and more diligent observation to the third and fourth qualities, thus terminating their contemplation prematurely. Nor are these powers (or the like) to be investigated only among the medicines for