XII. SENTENCES.

Of the Condition of Man.

1. MAN, the servant and interpreter of nature, does and understands as much, as he shall really or mentally observe of the order of nature, himself meanwhile enclosed around by the laws of nature.

2. The limit, therefore, of human power and knowledge, is in the faculties, with which man is endowed by nature for moving and perceiving, as well as in the state of present things. For beyond these bases, those instruments avail not.

3. These faculties, though of themselves weak and inept, are yet capable, when properly and regularly managed, of setting before the judgment and use things most remote from sense and action, and of overcoming greater difficulty of works and obscurity of knowledge, than any one hath yet learned to wish.

4. Truth is one, interpretation one; but sense is oblique, the mind alien, the matter urgent; yet the work itself of interpretation is devious rather than difficult.

Of the Impediments of Interpretation.

5. Whoever, unable to doubt, and eager to affirm, shall establish principles proved, (as he believes,) conceded, and manifest, and, according to the unmoved truth of these, shall reject or receive others as repugnant or favourable; he shall exchange things for words, reason for insanity, the world for a fable, and shall be incapable of interpreting.

6. He who hath not mixed, confounded, and rcduced into a mass, all distinction of things, which appears in the commonly established species, and the names imposed, shall not see the

unity of nature, nor the legitimate lines of things, and shall not be able to interpret.

7. He who hath not first, and before all, intimately explored the movements of the human mind, and therein most accurately distinguished the course of knowledge and the seats of error, shall find all things masked and, as it were, enchanted, and, till he undo the charm, shall be unable to interpret.

8. He who is occupied in inquiring into the causes of things obvious and compound, as flame, dreams, fever, and doth not betake himself to simple natures; first, to those which are popularly esteemed such; next, to those which by art are reduced and, as it were, sublimed to truer simplicity, he shall, perhaps, if in the rest he err not, add to inventions some things not to be contemned, and next to inventions. But he shall effect nothing against the greater secularities of things, nor shall he be named an interpreter.

Of the Qualities of the Interpreter.

9. Let him who comes to interpret thus prepare and qualify himself; let him not be a follower of novelty, nor of custom or antiquity; neither let him embrace the license of contradicting or the servitude of authority. Let him not be hasty to affirm or unrestrained in doubting, but let him produce every thing marked with a certain degree of probation. Let hope be the cause of labour to him, not of idleness. Let him estimate things not by their rareness, difficulty, or credit, but by their real importance. Let him manage his private affairs under a mask, yet with some regard for the provisions of things. Let him prudently observe the first entrances of errors into truths, and of truths into errors, nothing contemning or admiring. Let him know the advantages of his nature; and let him humour the nature of others, for no man is angry with the stone that is

there remains such store of works most fruitful and altogether unknown, that they have not before this time, or now suddenly, been discovered; at the same time thou inquirest what they are by name, and promisest to thyself immortali

Of the Duty of the Interpreter.

10. Thus qualified and prepared, let the interpreter, proceed in this way. He will consider the condition of man, and remove the impediments of interpretation; then, girded up for his work, he will prepare a history and regular series of tables, at the same time appointing their uses, co-ordinations, occurrences, and appendages. He will exhibit the solitude of things and their resemblance of each other. He will also make a selection of things, and those which are most primitive or instant, that is, conduce especially to the invention of other things, or to human wants, he will place first in order. He will also observe the pre-eminences of instances, which can do much to shorten his work. And thus furnished, he will at length maturely and happily undertake and complete rearrangements and new tables, and the interpretation itself now easy and following spontaneonsly, nay, almost as if snatched away from the mind. Which, when he shall have accomplished, he will immediately perceive and number, in their pure and native light, the true, eternal, and simplest motions of nature, from the ordinate and well adjusted progress of which arises all this infinite variety, both of the present and of all ages. And meanwhile from the beginning of his work he will not fail to receive constantly, as interest, for human affairs many things and unknown. But from hence again, altogether directing himself to and intent upon the uses of mankind, and the present state of things, he will, in diverse ways, dispose and arrange the whole for action. To natures the most secret he will assign others explanatory, and to the most absent others superinductory. And then at last, like a second nature, he will institute generalities, the errors of which may be accounted monsters, yet also saving to himself the prerogative of his art.

Of the Provision of Things.

11. But thou receivest these things with languid hope and zeal, my son, and wonderest, if

But thou bestowest liberally upon thyself, my son, and wilt hunt after hope from knowledge, as from ignorance thou didst begin to hunt despair. Is it also by art, that the work must be adopted. Yet, as far as may be, I shall satisfy thy doubt, and obey thee. That these things are suddenly known, my son, is no wonder. Knowledge is of quick, time of tardy birth. Also the noble things which were invented before these, were not by the light of former knowledge gradually invented, but by chance, (as they say,) abundantly. But in things mechanical there is a certain extension of what is already invented, which yet deserves not the name of new invention. The way is not long, my son, but ambiguous. Yet, when I say that these things have not come to view before this time, hast thou ascertained, how much was known to all antiquity, or in all countries, or even to single individuals. But I almost agree with thee, my son, and will lead thee higher by the hand. Thou doubtest not but that if men had never existed, many of the things which are made by art (as they say) would have been wanting, as marble statues, clothes. But now, and men, have not they too their motions which they obey? Truly, my son, more subtle, and more difficult to comprehend by knowledge, yet equally certain. Indeed, you will say, men obey their will. I hear, but this is nothing. Such a cause as fortune is in the universe, such is the will in man. If any thing therefore is produced, yet not without man, and lies also beyond the ways of man, is it not equal to nothing? Man lights upon certain inventions which, as it were, present themselves, others he attains to by foreseeing the end and knowing the means. The knowledge of the means however he derives from things obvious. In which number then shall be placed those inventions which from things obvious receive neither obvious effect nor method and light of operations? Such works are called Epistemides, or daughters of science, which do not otherwise come into action than by knowledge and pure interpretation, seeing they contain nothing obvious. But between these and the obvious now many degrees thinkest thou are numbered? Receive, my son, and seal.

12. In the last place, my son, I counsel thee, as is especially necessary, with an enlightened and sober mind to distinguish the interpretation of things divine and things natural, and not to suffer these in any way to be mingled together. Errors enough there are in this kind. Nothing is learned here unless by the similitudes of things to each other: which, though they seem most dis

similar, do yet contain a genuine similitude known to the interpreter. But God is as similar to thee, and without a figure. Wherefore, expect from hence no sufficient light for the knowledge of him. Give faith to what is of faith.

CHAPTER FIRST.

Legitimate Mode of Delivering.

I PERCEIVE, my son, that many, in bringing forward, or, on the other hand, in concealing the knowledge of things which they conceive themselves to have attained, do noways conduct themselves according to their credit and duty. With equal detriment, though perhaps with less blame, do those also offend, who, though of excellent qualifications, are yet imprudent, and possess no art or precepts concerning the several modes of propounding things. Yet need we not make complaint regarding this malignity or ignorance in the teachers of knowledge. If, indeed, through the unskilfulness of teaching they were to destroy the importance of things, one might be angry not without cause; but we ought to consider that the importunity of teaching doth even by right belong to the impertinences of things. But far different from these, when I am going to impart to thee, not the fictions of ingenuity, nor the shadows of words, or the devotion mingled therewith, nor certain popular observations, or certain noble experiments trimmed up into fables of theory, but in truth to bind and make over unto thee nature with her offspring; does the argument I have before me seem worthy of being polluted by the ambition or ignorance or faultiness of any sort with which it is treated? May I be such, my son, and may I so extend to its given limits the narrowness, never enough lamented, of man's empire over the universe, (which, of things human, is my sole wish,) that most faithfully and from the deepest providence of my mind, and the well explored state of things and of minds, I may deliver these to thee in the most legitimate mode of all. But now, which (thou wilt say) is that legitimate mode? Dismiss all art and circumstance, exhibit the matter naked to us, that we may be enabled to use our judgAnd would that you were in a condition, dearest son, to admit of this being done. Thinkest thou that, when all the accesses and motions of all minds are besieged and obstructed by the obscurest idols deeply rooted and branded in, the sincere and polished areas present themselves in the true and native rays of things? A new method must be entered upon, by which we may glide into minds the most obstructed. For, as the delirium of phrenetics is subdued by art and ingenuity, but by force and contention raised to fury; so, in this universal insanity we must use moderation. What? Are these conditions triVOL. II.-69

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fling which pertain to the legitimate mode of communicating knowledge? Do they seem to thee so free and easy, that the method is innocent, that it affords no handle or occasion for error? that it has a certain inherent and innate power of conciliating belief and repelling the injuries of time, so that knowledge thus delivered, like a plant full of life's freshness, may spread daily and grow to maturity? that it will set apart for itself, and, as it were, adopt a legitimate reader? And, whether I shall have accomplished all this or not, I appeal to future time.

CHAPTER SECOND.

BUT, plainly, I dissemble not, my son, that in some way I must remove those philosophasters, fuller of fables than the very poets, the ravishers of minds, falsifiers of things; and much more, also, their satellites and parasites, that professorial and money-gaming crowd: who dictates the song, that I may devote them to oblivion? For, what silence can there be for truth, when they are thus clamorous with their brutish and inarticulate reasons? But, perhaps, it were safer to condemn them by name, lest, while they flourish with such authority, if not named they may seem to be excepted, or lest any might conceive, seeing such severe and mortal hatred at work amongst them, and such contentions, that I were sent to these battles of larves and shadows to give assistance to the other side. Let us, then, summon Aristotle, worst of sophists, crazed with useless subtlety, base laughing-stock of words. At a time when the human mind, carried by some chance as by favourable weather to somewhat of truth, did rest, he ventured to lay the severest shackles on the mind, and to compose a kind of art of insanity, and to bind us to words. Nay, also, out of his bosom have been produced and nourished those most cunning prattlers, who, when they had turned away from all perambulation of this earth, and from all light of things and of history, exhibited to us, chiefly from the exceeding ductile materials of his precepts and positions, and from the unquiet agitation of their own ingenuity, the manifold sweepings of the schools. But this their dictator is so much the more to blame than they, since even when engaged in the evident things of history, he brought back the darkest idols of some subterranean den; and erected even upon the history itself of particular things certain works as of spiders, which he wished to seem causes, whereas they are utterly without strength or value. Such also in our times hath Geronimo Cardano constructed, both at variance with things and with himself. Yet, augur not, my son, that while I entertain this opinion against Aristotle, I have conspired with his rebel, a certain Pierre Ramus. No commerce have I with this nest of

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