The first and famous axiom of the "Novum Organum" contains the phrase which Bacon constantly repeats,--"man being the interpreter of Nature." Leonardo uses the same expression,--"li omini inventori e interpreti tra la natura e gli omini." In another admirable passage of rebuke of the boastful and empty followers of old teachers, Leonardo says: "Though I might not cite authors as well as they, I shall cite a much greater and worthier thing, in citing experience, the teacher of their teachers" (_Maestra di loro maestri_). "And as for the overmuch credit," says Bacon, "that hath been given unto authors in sciences, in making them dictators that their words should stand, and not counsellors to give advice, the damage is infinite that sciences have received thereby." Similar parallelisms of thought are to be found in some of Galileo's sentences, when brought into comparison with Lord Bacon.] [Footnote B: Article on Whately's Edition of Bacon's Essays. September, 1856.] The cause of Bacon's error in this regard, an error in spite of which his philosophical works still remain the crowded repositories of true wisdom, seems to have arisen, in considerable part, from a defect of imagination. Knowledge is to be viewed in two aspects: one, that of its relation to the finite capacities of the human mind; the other, its relation to the infinity of Nature, that is, to the infinity of the subjects of knowledge. Bacon regarded it chiefly from the first point of view,--and, so far as we are aware, there is nowhere in his works any recognition of the fact, that each advance in knowledge only opens new and previously unknown regions of what is yet to be known. He supposed that by his process Nature could be simplified to her few primary elements, and that from these all other knowledge was to be deduced. But, although her laws and elementary forms may be few, their mollifications, as affecting knowledge and consequently human power and interests, are unlimited. Moreover, in supposing that the discovery of Nature could be made certain, and that, by a proper collection of facts, the intellects of men might be brought upon a level of capacity for discovery,--that is, that the process of discovery could be reduced to a simple process of correct reasoning upon established facts,--Bacon omitted to take into account the essential part which the imagination plays in all discovery.