instances; or by correcting the understanding of its habits, as in the deviating instances; or by leading to the grand form or fabric of the universe, as in the bordering instances; or by guarding it from false forms and causes, as in those of the cross and of divorce. With regard to practice, they either point it out, or measure, or elevate it. They point it out, either by showing where we must commence in order not to repeat the labors of others, as in the instances of power; or by inducing us to aspire to that which may be possible, as in the suggesting instances; the four mathematical instances measure it. The generally useful and the magical elevate it. Again, out of these twenty-seven instances, some must be collected immediately, without waiting for a particular investigation of properties. Such are the similar, singular, deviating, and bordering instances, those of power, and of the gate, and suggesting, generally useful, and magical instances; for these either assist and cure the understanding and senses, or furnish our general practice. The remainder are to be collected when we furnish our synoptical tables for the work of the interpreter, upon any particular nature; for these instances, honored and gifted with such prerogatives, are like the soul amid the vulgar crowd of instances, and (as we from the first observed) a few of them are worth a multitude of the others. When, therefore, we are forming our tables they must be searched out with the greatest zeal, and placed in the table. And, since mention must be made of them in what follows, a treatise upon their nature has necessarily been prefixed. We must next, however, proceed to the supports and corrections of induction, and thence to concretes, the latent process, and latent conformations, and the other matters, which we have enumerated in their order in the twenty-first aphorism, in order that, like good and faithful guardians, we may yield up their fortune to mankind upon the emancipation and majority of their understanding; from which must necessarily follow an improvement of their estate, and an increase of their power over nature. For man, by the fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, “in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” she is compelled by our labors (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies), at length, to afford mankind in some degree his bread, that is to say, to supply man’s daily wants. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: Selection from the Preface to the _Novum Organum_.] [Footnote 3: Part II, Conclusion of the _Novum Organum_.] II NICOLAUS COPERNICUS 1473-1543