The works of Francis Bacon, lord chancellor of England.

EDITOR'S PREFACE. 3
gard to particulars; what must be thought of the common Natural History, which in comparison of
ours, is so negligent and remiss; or, what of the philosophy, and the sciences, built upon such quicksands! Let no one, therefore, be concerned, if our history has its errors."
And, in the Advancement of Learning, when treating of credulity, he says, v"The matter of manifest
truth is not to be mingled or weakened with matter of doubtful credit; and yet again, rarities and reports that seem incredible are not to be suppressed or denied to the memory of men."
From the slightest examination of this work it will appear that, not having such a collection of
natural history as he had measured out in his mind, which would have required the purse of a prince,
and the assistance of apeople, Lord Bacon did the best in his power, trying all things but not believing all things, to make such a collection as might render some assistance to future inquirers, by pointing out the mode in which a natural history ought to be complied, without haste in the admission or
rejection of received reports. "The rejection," he says, ",which I continally use, of experiments,
though it appeareth not, is infinite; but yet if an experiment be probable in the work, and of great
use, I receive it, but deliver it as doubtful."
This, perhaps, will be illustrated by some of the articles in the tenth century of this work, in his
inquiry touching the " transmission and influx of immateriate virtues and the force of imagination,"
where he thus begins: " The philosophy of Pythagoras, which afterwards was, by the school of Plato
and others, watered and nourished. It was, that the world was one entire perfect living creature;
insomuch as Apollonius of Tyana, a Pythagorean prophet, affirmed, that the ebbing and flowing of
the sea was the respiration of the world, drawing in water as breath, and putting it forth again. They
went on, and inferred, that if the world were a living creature, it had a soul and spirit; which also
they held, calling it spiritus mundi, the spirit or soul of the world: by which they did not intend
God, for they did admit of a Deity besides, but only the soul or essential form of the universe."..
With these vast and bottomless follies men have been in part entertained.
"6 But we, that hold firm to the works of God, and to the sense, which is God's lamp, lucerna Dei
spiraculum hominis, will inquire with all sobriety and severity, whether there be to be found in the
footsteps of nature, any such transmission and influx of immateriate virtues; and what the force of
imagination is; either upon the body imaginant, or upon another body; wherein it will be like that
labour of Hercules, in purging the stable of Augeas, to separate from superstitious and magical arts
and observations, any thing that is clean and pure natural; and not to be either contemned or condemtned."
In this spirit, mistaken for credulity, he says,' the sympathy of individuals, that have been entire,
or have touched, is of all others the most incredible; yet according unto our faithful manner of examination of nature, we will make some little mention of it. The talking away of warts, by rubbing
them with somewhat that afterwards is put to waste and consume, is a common experiment; and I
do apprehend it the rather because of my own experience. I had from my childhood a wart upon one of
nmy fingers: afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then at Paris, there grew upon
both my hands a number of warts, at the least a hundred, in a month's space. The English ambassador's lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day, she would help me away
with my warts: whereupon she got a piece of lard with the slin on and rubbed the warts all over
with the fat side; and amongst the rest, that wart which I had had from my childhood: then she
nailed the piece of lard, with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her chamber window, which
was to the south. The success was, that within five weeks' space all the warts went quite away:
and that wart which I had so long endured for company. But at the rest I did little marvel, because
they came in a- short time, and might go away in a short time again: but the going away of that
which had stayed so long doth yet stick with me."
Again,52 1 The relations touching the force of imagination, and the secret instincts of nature, are so
uncertain, as they require a great deal of examination ere we conclude upon them. I would have it
first thoroughly inquired, whether there be any secret passages of sympathy between persons of near
blood, as parents, children, brothers, sisters, nurse-children, husbands, wives, &c. There be many
reports in history, that upon the death of persons of such nearness, men have had an inward feelingoof it. I myself remember, that being in Paris, and my father dying in London, two or three days
before my father's death, I had a dream, which I told to diverse English gentlemen, that my father's
house in the country was plastered all over with black mortar. There is an opinion abroad, whether idle
or rno 1 cannot say, that loving and kind husbands have a sense of their wives breeding children, by
some accident in their own body."3
X Article 997. a Article 986.
3 There are in different parts of the Sylva Sylvarum facts evincing Bacon's life of mind, and faculty of generalizing from
his earliest infancy. See Art. 9-16, when his mind is at work upon the nature of imagination, most probably before he was
twelve years old, when he quitted his father's house for the university, from whence at sixteen, he went with Sir Amyas
Pailet to Paris, and returned after his father's death. See also Art. 1.51, when in Trinity College meditatingupon the nature
of sound. See also Art. 140, 148, 248.