Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of NatureBacon, Francis
Religion
Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature
Bacon, Francis
Science -- Methodology
the musicians when they have a special grace in flying the close or
cadence. And these are no allusions but direct communities, the same
delights of the mind being to be found not only in music, rhetoric,
but in moral philosophy, policy, and other knowledges, and that
obscure in the one, which is more apparent in the other, yea and that
discovered in the one which is not found at all in the other, and so
one science greatly aiding to the invention and augmentation of
another. And therefore without this intercourse the axioms of
sciences will fall out to be neither full nor true; but will be such
opinions as Aristotle in some places doth wisely censure, when he
saith THESE ARE THE OPINIONS OF PERSONS THAT HAVE RESPECT BUT TO A
FEW THINGS. So then we see that this note leadeth us to an
administration of knowledge in some such order and policy as the king
of Spain in regard of his great dominions useth in state; who though
he hath particular councils for several countries and affairs, yet
hath one council of State or last resort, that receiveth the
advertisements and certificates from all the rest. Hitherto of the
diversion, succession, and conference of wits.
CAP. 9.
THAT THE END AND SCOPE OF KNOWLEDGE HATH BEEN GENERALLY MISTAKEN, AND
THAT MEN WERE NEVER WELL ADVISED WHAT IT WAS THEY SOUGHT; BEING THE
9TH CHAPTER, WHEREOF A FRAGMENT (WHICH IS THE END OF THE SAME
CHAPTER) IS BEFORE.
It appeareth then how rarely the wits and labours of men have been
converted to the severe and original inquisition of knowledge; and in
those who have pretended, what hurt hath been done by the affectation
of professors and the distraction of such as were no professors; and
how there was never in effect any conjunction or combination of wits
in the first and inducing search, but that every man wrought apart,
and would either have his own way or else would go no further than
his guide, having in the one case the honour of a first, and in the
other the ease of a second; and lastly how in the descent and
continuance of wits and labours the succession hath been in the most
popular and weak opinions, like unto the weakest natures which many
times have most children, and in them also the condition of
succession hath been rather to defend and to adorn than to add; and
if to add, yet that addition to be rather a refining of a part than
an increase of the whole. But the impediments of time and accidents,
though they have wrought a general indisposition, yet are they not so
peremptory and binding as the internal impediments and clouds in the
mind and spirit of man, whereof it now followeth to speak.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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