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in true reason should be, and that men ought not to make a confusion of unbelief; yet he saw well it could not otherwise be in event, but that experience of untruth had made access to truth more difficult, and that the ignominy of vanity had abated all greatness of mind.

10. He thought also, there was found in the mind of man an affection naturally bred, and fortified and furthered by discourse and doctrine, which did pervert the true proceeding towards active and operative knowledge. This was a false estimation, that it should be as a diminution to the mind of man to be much conversant in experiences and particulars subject to sense and bound in matter, and which are laborious to search, ignoble to meditate, harsh to deliver, illiberal to practise, infinite as is supposed in number, and no ways accommodate to the glory of arts. This opinion or state of mind received much credit and strength by the school of Plato, who thinking that particulars rather revived the notions or excited the faculties of the mind, than merely informed; and having mingled his philosophy with superstition, which never favoureth the sense; extolleth too much the understanding of man in the inward light thereof. And again Aristotle's school, which giveth the due to the sense in assertion, denieth it in practice much more than that of Plato. For we see the schoolmen, Aristotle's succession, which were utterly ignorant of history, rested only upon agitation of wit; whereas Plato giveth good exam ple of inquiry by induction and view of particulars ; though in such a wandering manner as is of no force or fruit. So that he saw well, that the supposition

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of the sufficiency of man's mind hath lost the means thereof.1

1 Here the MS. ends abruptly in the middle of the page. At the top is written in Bacon's hand "The English as much as was parfited." The blank part of the last page seems to have formed the outside of a miscellaneous bundle, and bears the following docket, also in Bacon's hand, "Severall fragments of discourses."

DE

INTERPRETATIONE NATURÆ

PROCEMIUM.

PREFACE

TO THE

DE INTERPRETATIONE NATURE PROCEMIUM.

THE paper that bears this title was first published by Gruter. He printed it among the Impetus Philosophici (concerning which see Preface to Part II. Vol. V. p. 187.) where it stands by itself, unconnected with the neighbouring pieces. Hence I conclude that it was one of the loose papers.

Its date may be partly inferred from the contents. Bacon speaks of himself in it as a man no longer young, yet not old;2 and as. one who having been a candidate (apparently without success) for office in the state, had at length resolved to abandon that pursuit and betake himself entirely to this work. All this suits very well with his position in the summer of 1603, when he desired "to meddle as little as he could in the King's causes" and "put his ambition wholly upon his pen;" at which time also he was engaged on a work concerning the "Invention of Sciences," which he had digested into two parts, whereof one was entitled Interpretatio Nature. And since this prooemium was evidently intended to stand as a general intro1 cum ætas jam consisteret.

2 hominem non senem.

8 ab istis cogitationibus me prorsus alienavi et in hoc opus ex priore decreto me totum recepi.

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