SelectionsC. Scribner's sons, 1928 - 430 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Acatalepsia action Advancement of Learning affections ages ancient antiquity Aristotle arts Augustus Cæsar axioms Bacon better body burning-glass Cæsar CARL VAN DOREN causes Cicero civil cold conceived contemplation deficient degree Democritus Demosthenes difference discourse discover discovery divine doctrine doth doubt errors excellent experience felicity fire flame fortune Francis Bacon hand handled hath heat honour human Idols induction inquiry Instances intellectual invention judgment Julius Cæsar kind knowl knowledge labour laws less light likewise logic man's manner matter means men's ment Metaphysic method mind moral motion natural history natural philosophy Natural Theology nature of things Novum Organum observation opinion particular Plato pleasure poesy precept principles Professor of English reason rest saith sciences seemeth sense speak speech spirit substances syllogism Tacitus things thought tion touching true truth understanding University unto virtue wherein whereof wisdom wise words
Popular passages
Page 80 - Faithful are the wounds of a friend ; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
Page xix - But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge. For men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession...
Page xix - The end of our Foundation is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.
Page 93 - But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation.
Page 274 - It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
Page 96 - OF FRANCIS BACON OF THE PROFICIENCE AND ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING DIVINE AND HUMAN.
Page xxxviii - Men sought truth in their own little worlds, and not in the great and common world'; for they disdain to spell and so by degrees to read in the volume of God's works; and contrariwise by continual meditation and agitation of wit do urge and as it were inyocate their own spirits to divine and give oracles unto them, whereby they are deservedly deluded.
Page 89 - Great, after that he was used to great armies, and the great conquests of the spacious provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of Greece, of some fights and services there, which were commonly for a passage, or a fort, or some walled town at the most, he said, " It seemed to him, that he was advertised of the battle of the frogs and the mice, that the old tales went of.
Page 277 - There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms.
Page 184 - For as knowledges are now delivered, there is a kind of contract of error between the deliverer and the receiver: for he that delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such form as may be best believed, and not as may be best examined...