shall have but a change or errors, and not a clearance); and to lay it
down once for all as a fixed and established maxim, that the intellect
is not qualified to judge except by means of induction, and induction
in its legitimate form. This doctrine then of the expurgation of the
intellect to qualify it for dealing with truth, is comprised in three
refutations: the refutation of the Philosophies; the refutation of the
Demonstrations; and the refutation of the Natural Human Reason. The
explanation of which things, and of the true relation between the
nature of things and the nature of the mind, is as the strewing and
decoration of the bridal chamber of the Mind and the Universe, the
Divine Goodness assisting; out of which marriage let us hope (and be
this the prayer of the bridal song) there may spring helps to man,
and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and
overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity. This is the second
part of the work.

* * * * *

But I design not only to indicate and mark out the ways, but also
to enter them. And therefore the third part of the work embraces the
Phenomena of the Universe; that is to say, experience of every kind,
and such a natural history as may serve for a foundation to build
philosophy upon. For a good method of demonstration or form of
interpreting nature may keep the mind from going astray or stumbling,
but it is not any excellence of method that can supply it with the
material of knowledge. Those however who aspire not to guess and
divine, but to discover and know; who propose not to devise mimic and
fabulous worlds of their own, but to examine and dissect the nature
of this very world itself; must go to facts themselves for
everything. Nor can the place of this labour and search and
worldwide perambulation be supplied by any genius or meditation or
argumentation; no, not if all men's wits could meet in one. This
therefore we must have, or the business must be for ever abandoned.
But up to this day such has been the condition of men in this matter,
that it is no wonder if nature will not give herself into their hands.

For first, the information of the sense itself, sometimes failing,
sometimes false; observation, careless, irregular, and led by chance;
tradition, vain and fed on rumour; practice, slavishly bent upon its
work; experiment, blind, stupid, vague, and prematurely broken off;
lastly, natural history