However, I do not pretend to say that all the modern savants indulge, in this same manner, in presumption and false notions with regard to antiquity; there have been many honourable exceptions among them: even those have been found who, drawn beyond the golden mean, by the necessity of effecting a useful reform or of establishing a new system, have returned there as soon as their passion or their interest have no longer commanded them. Such for example is Bacon, to whom philosophy has owed enough great favours to forget certain incidental prejudices; for I am, furthermore, far from attributing to him the errors of his disciples. Bacon, at the risk of contradicting himself, yielding to the sentiment of truth, although he subjected all to the light of experience, admitted, however, positive and real universals, which, by his method are wholly inexplicable.[462] Forgetting what he had said of Plato in one book, he declared in another: that this philosopher, endowed with a sublime genius, turning his attention upon all nature and contemplating all things from a lofty elevation, had seen very clearly, in his doctrine of ideas, what the veritable objects of science are.[463] Finally recognizing the principles of physics and the _ensemble_ of things as the foremost to be considered, he made astrological science, which he likened to astronomy, depend upon it, in such a manner as to show that he did not confound it with vulgar astrology. This philosopher found that before his time, astronomy, well enough founded upon phenomena, utterly lacked soundness, and that astrology had lost its true principles. To be sure he agreed with astronomy presenting the exterior of celestial phenomena, that is to say, the number, situation, movement, and periods of the stars; but he accused it of lacking in understanding of the physical reasons of these phenomena. He believed that a single theory which contents itself with appearances is a very easy thing, and that one can imagine an infinity of speculations of this sort; also he wished that the science of astronomy might be further advanced. Instead of revealing the reasons of celestial phenomena [he said], one is occupied only with observations and mathematical demonstrations; for these observations and these demonstrations can indeed furnish certain ingenious hypotheses to settle all that in one’s mind, and to make an idea of this assemblage, but not to know precisely how and why all this is actually in nature: they indicate, at the most, the apparent movements, the artificial assemblage, the arbitrary combination of all these phenomena, but not the veritable causes and the reality of things: and as to this subject [he continues], it is with very little judgment that astronomy is ranked among the mathematical sciences; this classification derogates from its dignity.[464]