Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/380

 NOTES TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. . Scientific houses. . Mathematical houses. . Chemical houses. . Houses for fine arts, &c. . Collections of natural history. . Animals. . Vegetables. . Minerals. . Collections of arts. . Patents. . Mathematical arts. . Fine arts. . Engravings. . Paintings. . Sculpture. . Lectures. . Defects of universities. At present I must content myself with expressing my anxious hope that the project for a metropolitan university will (as it will sooner or later) be realized, and that the en quirers for knowledge will not be under the present necessity of attending for information at the different taverns in the different parts of this city: at Willis s Rooms, and at the London Tavern, and at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, and the Paul s Head, C.iteaton Street, where lectures, numer- rously attended, are now delivered upon different parts of natural and human philosophy. Query 1. As a tree is for some dimension and space entire and continued before it breaks and parts itself into arms and boughs, ought there not to be lectures upon such general sub jects as will be applicable to men in all states of society : upon . Man as an individual. . The laws of health. . The passions, including all our different pleasures. . The understanding . Man in society. . The general principles of law. . The general principles of politics, political eco nomy, &c. &c. Query 2. As the British Museum contains a noble library, a collection of natural history, of sculpture, and of paint ings: as the buildings are rapidly advancing, and as it has been intimated that a street is to be opened from the museum to Waterloo bridge, could this establishment be of any and what use to such an institution 1 NOTE N. Referring to page 142. John Milton in his tract on education, says, &quot;That which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to .schools and universities: partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and ora tions, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not mat ters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood flowing out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit; besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idioms, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to read, yet not to be avoided without a well continued and judicious conversing among the pure authors digested, which they scarce taste.&quot; &quot; I deem it to be an old error of universities, not well recovered from scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most uasy, (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense,) they present their young unmatriculated novices at first corn ing with the most intellective abstractions of logic and meta physics.&quot; Cicero, says Middleton, made it his constant care that the progress of his knowledge should keep pace with the im provement of his eloquence. He considered the one as the foundation of the other, and thought it in vain to acquire ornaments before he had provided necessary furniture. I subjoin the following observations from a MS. in my pos session; by whom it was written I know not: &quot;The defects here noted i&quot; the universities seem to have cured themselves. Logic, by the supineness of teachers, and indolence of pupils, bavin? become a mere dead letter: no- ibing however 5ia be^n properly substituted in its place, and the crude, hasty, and injudicious method in which mrithe. matics are taught in one university, seems little preferable to the absolute neglect of them in the other. In both the genuine sources of information, the ancient writers, have been too much neglected, and from the same neglect has pro ceeded the downfall of logic, as well as mathematics. Since neither in the first is Aristotle, or his purest Greek commen tators, Simplicius and Philopinus regarded; nor in the latter have the elegant inventions recorded in Pappus and Archi medes, the Analytical restitutions which Vieta and Halley have given from Apollonius, the genuine conic geometry of the same author, the spherics of Theodosius and Menceaus, the remains of Theon and Etitocius, of Eratosthenes and Hero, been sufficiently attended, to which, and to the suc cessful use of the new methods of calculus, it has happened that mathematics, as they are now cultivated, have much de parted from that perspicuity and evidence which ought always to be their character. &quot;I make it therefore a desideratum that the use and effect of the ancient Analysis be well considered both in plane and solid problems, since it is certain that its use did extend very far among the ancients, and the restitution of it would very much improve the construction of problems, which are always less perspicuously, many times less easily treated by common Algebra. &quot;Something of this kind, though not generally known, is to be found in an unpublished MS. of Sir Isaac Newton, de Geometri& libri tres, great part of which is perfect. &quot;The true theory of the Porisms, imperfectly found in Pan- pus, given up as unintelligible by Halley, inadequately at tempted by the acute Fermat, and laboured with much unvail- ing industry by Rob. Simson, may be said to be at last com pletely ascertained by Professor Playfair of Edinburgh.&quot; NOTE O. Referring to page 143. Bacon arranges the History of Arts as a species of Natural History. This subject is much improved in the treatise &quot; De Augmentis,&quot; where he states his reasons for this arrange ment, (See chap. 2. Book 2. De Aug.) saying, &quot;We are the rather induced to assign the History of Arts, as a branch of Natural History, because an opinion hath long time gone current, as if art were some different thing from nature, and artificial from natural.&quot; The same sentiment is expressed both by Sir Thomas Brown and by Shakspeare. Brown says, &quot;Nature is not at variance with art; nor art with nature: they being both the servants of the Providence of God. Art is the perfection of nature : were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial : for, nature is the art of God.&quot; So Shakspeare says, &quot; Perdita. For I have heard it said, There is an art, which in their piedness shares With great creating nature. &quot; Pol. Say there be, Yet nature is made better by no mean* But nature makes that mean ; So over that art, which you say adds to nature, Is an art that nature makes; you see, sweet maid, We marry a gentle scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. This is an art, Which does mend nature, change it rather; but The art itself is nature.&quot; NOTE P. Referring to page 146. This note is referred to the treatise De Augmentis. NOTE Q. Referring to page 150. See as to the nature of credulity under Fantastical Learn ing, ante pages 139, 171. See also Nov. Org. aph. 9. &quot;The mind has the peculiar arid constant error of being more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives, whereas it should duly and equally yield to both. But, on he contrary, in the raising of true axioms, negative instance* ia&quot;p the greatest force. &quot;The mind of man, if a thing have once been existent, anj