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THE READER.

HAVING had the honour to be continually with
my lord in compiling of this work, and to be em-
ployed therein, I have thought it not amiss, with
his lordship's good leave and liking, for the better sa-
tisfaction of those that shall read it, to make known
somewhat of his lordship's intentions touching the
ordering, and publishing of the same.
I have heard
his lordship often say, that, if he should have served
the glory of his own name, he had been better not to
have published this Natural History: for it may
seem an indigested heap of particulars, and cannot
have that lustre, which books cast into methods have;
but that he resolved to prefer the good of men, and
that which might best secure it, before any thing
that might have relation to himself. And he knew
well, that there was no other way open to unloose
mens minds, being bound, and, as it were, maleficiate,
by the charms of deceiving notions and theories, and
thereby made impotent for generation of works, but
only no where to depart from the sense, and clear
experience, but to keep close to it, especially in the
beginning: besides, this Natural History was a
debt of his, being designed and set down for a third
part of the Instauration. I have also heard his lord-
ship discourse that men, no doubt, will think many

of the experiments, contained in this collection, to be vulgar and trivial, mean and sordid, curious and fruitless: and therefore, he wisheth that they would have perpetually before their eyes what is now in doing, and the difference between this Natural History and others. For those Natural Histories which are extant, being gathered for delight and use, are full of pleasant descriptions and pictures, and affect and seek after admiration, rarities, and secrets. But, contrariwise, the scope which his lordship intendeth, is to write such a Natural History, as may be fundamental to the erecting and building of a true philosophy, for the illumination of the understanding, the extracting of axioms, and the producing of many noble works and effects. For he hopeth by this means to acquit himself of that for which he taketh himself in a sort bound, and that is, the advancement of all learning, and sciences. For, having in this present work collected the materials for the building, and in his Novum Organum, of which his lordship is yet to publish a second part, set down the instruments and directions for the work; men shall now be wanting to themselves, if they raise not knowledge to that perfection whereof the nature of mortal men is capable. And in this behalf, I have heard his lordship speak complainingly, that his lordship, who thinketh he deserveth to be an architect in this building, should be forced to be a workman, and a labourer, and to dig the clay, and burn the brick; and, more than that, according to the hard condition of the Israelites at the latter end, to gather the straw and stubble, over all the fields, to burn the bricks withal. For he knoweth, that except he do it, nothing will be done: men are so set to despise the means of their own

good. And as for the baseness of many of the experiments; as long as they be God's works, they are honourable enough. And for the vulgarness of them, true axioms must be drawn from plain experience and not from doubtful; and his lordship's course is to make wonders plain, and not plain things wonders; and that experience likewise must be broken and grinded, and not whole, or as it groweth. And for use; his lordship hath often in his mouth the two kinds of experiments; experimenta fructifera, and experimenta lucifera: experiments of use, and experiments of light and he reporteth himself, whether he were not a strange man, that should think that light hath no use, because it hath no matter. Further, his lordship thought good also to add unto many of the experiments themselves some gloss of the causes; that in the succeeding work of interpreting nature, and framing axioms, all things may be in more readiness. And for the causes herein by him assigned; his lordship persuadeth himself, they are far more certain than those that are rendered by others; not for any excellency of his own wit, as his lordship is wont to say, but in respect of his continual conversation with nature and experience. He did consider likewise, that by this addition of causes, mens minds, which make so much haste to find out the causes of things, would not think themselves utterly lost in a vast wood of experience, but stay upon these causes, such as they are, a little, till true axioms may be more fully discovered. I have heard his lordship say also, that one great reason, why he would not put these particulars into any exact method, though he that looketh attentively into them shall find that they have a secret order, was, because he conceived that

other men would now think that they could do the like; and so go on with a further collection: which, if the method had been exact, many would have despaired to attain by imitation. As for his lordship's love of order, I can refer any man to his lordship's Latin book, De Augmentis Scientiarum; which, if my judgment be any thing, is written in the exactest order that I know any writing to be. I will conclude with an usual speech of his lordship's: That this work of his Natural History is the World as God made it, and not as men have made it; for that it hath nothing of imagination.

W. RAWLEY.

This epistle is the same, that should have been prefixed to this book, if his lordship had lived.