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Here followeth an abridgment of divers chapters of the first
book of Interpretation of Nature.
CAP. 12.
That in deciding and determining of the truth of
knowledge, men have put themselves upon trials not competent. That
antiquity and authority; common and confessed notions; the natural and
yielding consent of the mind; the harmony and coherence of a knowledge in
itself; the establishing of principles with the touch and reduction of
other propositions unto them; inductions without instances contradictory;
and the report of the senses; are none of them absolute and infallible
evidence of truth, and bring no security sufficient for effects and
operations. That the discovery of new works and active directions not known
before, is the only trial to be accepted of; and yet not that neither, in
ease where one particular giveth light to another; but where particulars
induce an axiom or observation, which axiom found out discovereth and
designeth new particulars. That the nature of this trial is not only upon
the point, whether the knowledge be profitable or no, but even upon the
point whether the knowledge be true or no; not because you may always
conclude that the Axiom which discovereth new instances is true, but
contrariwise you may safely conclude that if it discover not any new
instance it is in vain and untrue. That by new instances are not always to
be understood new recipes but new assignations, and of the diversity
between these two. That the subtilty of words, arguments, notions, yea of
the senses themselves, is but rude and gross in comparison of the subtilty
of things; and of the slothful and flattering opinions of those which
pretend to honour the mind of man in withdrawing and abstracting it from
particulars, and of the inducements and motives whereupon such opinions
have been conceived and
received.
[@ Works III, 242]
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