others that duty of humanity, to put the wanderer on the right
way: nam qui erranti comiter monstrat viam1, &c. I foresee
likewise that many of those things which I shall think fit to
enter in this registry of mine as omitted and deficient will
incur censure on different accounts; some as being already
done and extant; others as savouring of curiosity, and pro-
mising very scanty fruit; others as being too difficult and
almost impossible to be compassed and effected by man. For
the two first I refer myself to the particulars themselves. For
the last, touching impossibility, I take it that all those things
are to be held possible and performable, which may be done by
some persons, though not by every one; and which may be done
by many together, though not by one alone; and which may be
done in the succession of ages, though not in one man's life;
and lastly, which may be done by public designation and ex-
pense, though not by private means and endeavour. But not-
withstanding if any man will take to himself rather the saying
of Solomon, "The slothful man says there is a lion in the path,"
than that of Virgil, Possunt, quia posse videntur 3, "they find it
possible because they think it possible," I shall be content
that my
labours be esteemed but as the better sort of wishes.
For as it asks some knowledge of a thing to demand a question
not impertinent, so it requires some sense to make a wish not
absurd.

Ennius, ap. Aul. Gell. xii. 4. and ap. Cic. De Officiis, i. 17.
2 Prov. xxvi. 13.
Virg. Æn. v. 231.

"2

CHAPTER I.

The Division of all Human Learning into History, Poesy, Philosophy; with reference to the three Intellectual Faculties, Memory, Imagination, and Reason; and that the same division holds good likewise in Theology.

THE best division of human learning is that derived from the three faculties of the rational soul, which is the seat of learning. History has reference to the Memory, poesy to the Imagination, and philosophy to the Reason. And by poesy here I mean nothing else than feigned history or fables; for verse is but a character of style, and belongs to the arts of speech, whereof I will treat in its proper place.

History is properly concerned with individuals, which are circumscribed by place and time. For though Natural History may seem to deal with species, yet this is only because of the general resemblance which in most cases natural objects of the same species bear to one another; so that when you know one, you know all. And if individuals are found, which are either unique in their species, like the sun and moon; or notable deviations from their species, like monsters; the description of these has as fit a place in Natural History as that of remarkable men has in Civil History. All this relates to the Memory.

Poesy, in the sense in which I have defined the word, is also concerned with individuals; that is, with individuals invented in imitation of those which are the subject of true history; yet with this difference, that it commonly exceeds the measure of nature, joining at pleasure things which in nature would never have come together, and introducing things which in nature would never have come to pass; just as Painting likewise does. This is the work of Imagination.

Philosophy discards individuals; neither does it deal with the impressions immediately received from them, but with abstract notions derived from these impressions; in the composition and division whereof according to the law of nature and fact its business lies. And this is the office and work of Reason."

That these things are so, may be easily seen by observing the commencements of the intellectual process. The sense,

which is the door of the intellect, is affected by individuals only. The images of those individuals—that is, the impressions which they make on the sense-fix themselves in the memory, and pass into it in the first instance entire as it were, just as they come. These the human mind proceeds to review and ruminate; and thereupon either simply rehearses them, or makes fanciful imitations of them, or analyses and classifies them. Wherefore from these three fountains, Memory, Imagination, and Reason, flow these three emanations, History, Poesy, and Philosophy; and there can be no others. For I consider history and experience to be the same thing, as also philosophy and the sciences.

Nor do I think that any other division is wanted for Theology. The information derived from revelation and the information derived from the sense differ no doubt both in the matter and in the manner of conveyance; but the human mind is the same, and its repositories and cells the same. It is only like different liquids poured through different funnels into one and the same vessel. Theology therefore in like manner consists either of Sacred History, or of Parables, which are a divine poesy, or of Doctrines and Precepts, which are a perennial philosophy. For as for that part which seems supernumerary, which is Prophecy, it is but a kind of history: for divine history has this prerogative over human, that the narration may be before the event, as well as after.

CHAP. II.

The Division of History into Natural and Civil; Ecclesiastical and Literary History being included in Civil. Division of Natural History into History of Generations, Pretergenerations, and Arts.

HISTORY is either Natural or Civil. Natural History treats of the deeds and works of nature; Civil History of those of men. Matter of Divinity shows itself no doubt in both, but principally in the latter; so much so as to form a species of history proper to itself, which I call Sacred or Ecclesiastical.

And a similar distinction is in my opinion also due to Learning and the Arts-their importance being such as to entitle them to a separate history of their own. And this (as well as the Ecclesiastical) I mean to be included in Civil History.

The division which I will make of Natural History is founded upon the state and condition of nature herself. For I find nature in three different states, and subject to three different conditions of existence. She is either free, and follows her ordinary course of development; as in the heavens, in the animal and vegetable creation, and in the general array of the universe; or she is driven out of her ordinary course by the perverseness, insolence, and frowardness of matter, and violence of impediments; as in the case of monsters; or lastly, she is put in constraint, moulded, and made as it were new by art and the hand of man; as in things artificial. Let Natural History therefore be divided into the History of Generations, of Pretergenerations, and of Arts; which last I also call Mechanical and Experimental History. Of these the first treats of the Freedom of Nature, the second of her Errors, the third of her Bonds. And I am the more induced to set down the History of the Arts as a species of Natural History, because an opinion has long been prevalent, that art is something different from nature, and things artificial different from things natural; whence this evil has arisen, that most writers of Natural History think they have done enough when they have given an account of animals or plants or minerals, omitting all mention of the experiments of mechanical arts. But there is likewise another and more subtle error which has crept into the human mind; namely, that of considering art as merely an assistant to nature, having the power indeed to finish what nature has begun, to correct her when lapsing into error, or to set her free when in bondage, but by no means to change, transmute, or fundamentally alter And this has bred a premature despair in human enterprises. Whereas men ought on the contrary to be surely persuaded of this; that the artificial does not differ from the natural in form or essence, but only in the efficient; in that man has no power over nature except that of motion; he can put natural bodies together, and he can separate them; and therefore that wherever the case admits of the uniting or disuniting of natural bodies, by joining (as they say) actives with passives, man can do everything; where the case does not admit this, he

nature.

can do nothing. Nor matters it, provided things are put in the way to produce an effect, whether it be done by human means or otherwise. Gold is sometimes refined in the fire and sometimes found pure in the sands, nature having done the work for herself. So also the rainbow is made in the sky out of a dripping cloud; it is also made here below with a jet of water. Still therefore it is nature which governs everything; but under nature are included these three; the course of nature, the wanderings of nature, and art, or nature with man to help; which three must therefore all be included in Natural History; as indeed they are in great measure by Pliny, the only person who ever undertook a Natural History according to the dignity of it; though he was far from carrying out his undertaking in a manner worthy of the conception.

The first of these, the history of nature in course, is extant, and that in moderate perfection; but the two latter are so weakly and unprofitably handled that they may be set down as deficient. For you will find no sufficient and competent collection of those works of nature which have a digression and deflexion from the ordinary course of generations, productions, and motions; whether they be singularities of place and region, or the strange events of time, or casuum ingenia (as they have been called) — devices of chance, or the effects of hidden properties, or productions of nature singular in their kind. It is true, I find books more than enough filled with fabulous experiments, idle secrets, and frivolous impostures, for pleasure and novelty; but a substantial and methodical collection of the Heteroclites or Irregulars of nature well examined and described I find not; especially not with due rejection and as it were public proscription of fables and popular errors. For as things now are, if an untruth in nature once get a footing and be made common, what by reason of men's reverence for antiquity, what by reason of the troublesomeness of putting it to the test anew, and what by reason of the use of the opinion in similitudes and ornaments of speech, it is never overthrown or retracted.

The end of this work, honoured with a precedent in Aristotle, is nothing less than to gratify the appetite of curious and vain wits, as the manner of mirabilaries is to do; but for two reasons, both of great weight; the one to correct the partiality of axioms and opinions, which are framed for the most part