which have not yet grown into
arts properly so called, so far as I have been able to examine them
and as they conduce to the end in view. Nay (to say the plain truth)
I do in fact (low and vulgar as men may think it) count more upon this
part both for helps and safeguards than upon the other; seeing that
the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations
of art than in its natural freedom.

Nor do I confine the history to Bodies; but I have thought it my
duty besides to make a separate history of such Virtues as may be
considered cardinal in nature. I mean those original passions or
desires of matter which constitute the primary elements of nature;
such as Dense and Rare, Hot and Cold, Solid and Fluid, Heavy and
Light, and several others.

Then again, to speak of subtlety: I seek out and get together a
kind of experiments much subtler and simpler than those which occur
accidentally. For I drag into light many things which no one who was
not proceeding by a regular and certain way to the discovery of causes
would have thought of inquiring after; being indeed in themselves of
no great use; which shows that they were not sought for on their own
account; but having just the same relation to things and works which
the letters of the alphabet have to speech and words--which, though
in themselves useless, are the elements of which all discourse is made
up.

Further, in the selection of the relation and experiments I conceive I
have been a more cautious purveyor than those who have hitherto dealt
with natural history. For I admit nothing but on the faith of eyes,
or at least of careful and severe examination; so that nothing is
exaggerated for wonder's sake, but what I state is sound and without
mixture of fables or vanity. All received or current falsehoods
also (which by strange negligence have been allowed for many ages to
prevail and become established) I proscribe and brand by name; that
the sciences may be no more troubled with them For it has been well
observed that the fables and superstitions and follies which nurses
instil into children do serious injury to their minds; and the same
consideration makes me anxious, having the management of the childhood
as it were of philosophy in its course of natural history, not to let
it accustom itself in the beginning to any vanity. Moreover, whenever
I come to a new experiment of any subtlety (though it be in my own
opinion certain and approved), I neverth