he honour of your age; if these things are
indeed worth anything. Certainly they are quite new; totally new in
their very kind: and yet they are copied from a very ancient model;
even the world itself and the nature of things and of the mind. And to
say truth, I am wont for my own part to regard this work as a child of
time rather than of wit; the only wonder being that the first notion
of the thing, and such great suspicions concerning matters long
established, should have come into any man's mind. All the rest
follows readily enough. And no doubt there is something of accident
(as we call it) and luck as well in what men think as in what they do
or say. But for this accident which I speak of, I wish that if
there be any good in what I have to offer, it may be ascribed to
the infinite mercy and goodness of God, and to the felicity of your
Majesty's times; to which as I have been an honest and affectionate
servant in my life, so after my death I may yet perhaps, through the
kindling of this new light in the darkness of philosophy, be the means
of making this age famous to posterity; and surely to the times of the
wisest and most learned of kings belongs of right the regeneration
and restoration of the sciences. Lastly, I have a request to make--a
request no way unworthy of your Majesty, and which especially concerns
the work in hand; namely, that you who resemble Solomon in so many
things--in the gravity of your judgments, in the peacefulness of your
reign, in the largeness of your heart, in the noble variety of the
books which you have composed--would further follow his example
in taking order for the collecting and perfecting of a Natural and
Experimental History, true and severe (unincumbered with literature
and book-learning), such as philosophy may be built upon,--such, in
fact, as I shall in its proper place describe: that so at length,
after the lapse of so many ages, philosophy and the sciences may no
longer float in air, but rest on the solid foundation of experience
of every kind, and the same well examined and weighed. I have provided
the machine, but the stuff must be gathered from the facts of nature.
May God Almighty long preserve your Majesty!

Your Majesty's
Most bounden and devoted Servant,
FRANCIS VERULAM,
Chancellor.

PREFACE

TO THE INSTAURATIO MAGNA

_That the state of knowledge is not prosperous nor greatly advancing;
and that a way must be opened for the human understanding en