The Advancement of Learning Page #37

The Advancement of Learning, published by Francis Bacon in 1605, is a foundational text in the history of science and philosophy. In this work, Bacon advocates for empirical research and the systematic organization of knowledge, laying the groundwork for the scientific method. The book critiques existing scholarly practices and proposes a new approach to learning based on observation and experimentation. It marks a significant shift towards modern scientific inquiry.

• Essay

								

of death.

(5) In the consideration of the cures of diseases, I find a deficience in
the receipts of propriety, respecting the particular cures of diseases:
for the physicians have frustrated the fruit of tradition and experience
by their magistralities, in adding and taking out and changing quid pro
qua in their receipts, at their pleasures; commanding so over the
medicine, as the medicine cannot command over the disease.  For except it
be treacle and mithridatum, and of late diascordium, and a few more,
they tie themselves to no receipts severely and religiously.  For as to
the confections of sale which are in the shops, they are for readiness
and not for propriety.  For they are upon general intentions of purging,
opening, comforting, altering, and not much appropriate to particular
diseases.  And this is the cause why empirics and old women are more
happy many times in their cures than learned physicians, because they are
more religious in holding their medicines.  Therefore here is the
deficience which I find, that physicians have not, partly out of their
own practice, partly out of the constant probations reported in books,
and partly out of the traditions of empirics, set down and delivered over
certain experimental medicines for the cure of particular diseases,
besides their own conjectural and magistral descriptions.  For as they
were the men of the best composition in the state of Rome, which either
being consuls inclined to the people, or being tribunes inclined to the
senate; so in the matter we now handle, they be the best physicians,
which being learned incline to the traditions of experience, or being
empirics incline to the methods of learning.

(9) In preparation of medicines I do find strange, specially considering
how mineral medicines have been extolled, and that they are safer for the
outward than inward parts, that no man hath sought to make an imitation
by art of natural baths and medicinable fountains: which nevertheless are
confessed to receive their virtues from minerals; and not so only, but
discerned and distinguished from what particular mineral they receive
tincture, as sulphur, vitriol, steel, or the like; which nature, if it
may be reduced to compositions of art, both the variety of them will be
increased, and the temper of them will be more commanded.

(10) But lest I grow to be more particular than is agreeable either to my
intention or to proportion, I will conclude this part with the note of
one deficience more, which seemeth to me of greatest consequence: which
is, that the prescripts in use are too compendious to attain their end;
for, to my understanding, it is a vain and flattering opinion to think
any medicine can be so sovereign or so happy, as that the receipt or miss
of it can work any great effect upon the body of man.  It were a strange
speech which spoken, or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to
which he were by nature subject.  It is order, pursuit, sequence, and
interchange of application, which is mighty in nature; which although it
require more exact knowledge in prescribing, and more precise obedience
in observing, yet is recompensed with the magnitude of effects.  And
although a man would think, by the daily visitations of the physicians,
that there were a pursuance in the cure, yet let a man look into their
prescripts and ministrations, and he shall find them but inconstancies
and every day’s devices, without any settled providence or project.  Not
that every scrupulous or superstitious prescript is effectual, no more
than every straight way is the way to heaven; but the truth of the
direction must precede severity of observance.

(11) For cosmetic, it hath parts civil, and parts effeminate: for
cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to
God, to society, and to ourselves.  As for artificial decoration, it is
well worthy of the deficiences which it hath; being neither fine enough
to deceive, nor handsome to use, nor wholesome to please.

(12) For athletic, I take the subject of it largely, that is to say, for
any point of ability whereunto the body of man may be brought, whether it
be of activity, or of patience; whereof activity hath two parts, strength
and swiftness; and patience likewise hath two parts, hardness against
wants and extremities, and endurance of pain or torment; whereof we see
the practices in tumblers, in savages, and in those that suffer
punishment.  Nay, if there be any other faculty which falls not within
any of the former divisions, as in those that dive, that obtain a strange
power of containing respiration, and the like, I refer it to this part.
Of these things the practices are known, but the philosophy that
concerneth them is not much inquired; the rather, I think, because they
are supposed to be obtained, either by an aptness of nature, which cannot
be taught, or only by continual custom, which is soon prescribed which
though it be not true, yet I forbear to note any deficiences; for the
Olympian games are down long since, and the mediocrity of these things is
for use; as for the excellency of them it serveth for the most part but
for mercenary ostentation.

(13) For arts of pleasure sensual, the chief deficience in them is of
laws to repress them.  For as it hath been well observed, that the arts
which flourish in times while virtue is in growth, are military; and
while virtue is in state, are liberal; and while virtue is in
declination, are voluptuary: so I doubt that this age of the world is
somewhat upon the descent of the wheel.  With arts voluptuary I couple
practices joculary; for the deceiving of the senses is one of the
pleasures of the senses.  As for games of recreation, I hold them to
belong to civil life and education.  And thus much of that particular
human philosophy which concerns the body, which is but the tabernacle of
the mind.

XI. (1) For human knowledge which concerns the mind, it hath two parts;
the one that inquireth of the substance or nature of the soul or mind,
the other that inquireth of the faculties or functions thereof.   Unto
the first of these, the considerations of the original of the soul,
whether it be native or adventive, and how far it is exempted from laws
of matter, and of the immortality thereof, and many other points, do
appertain: which have been not more laboriously inquired than variously
reported; so as the travail therein taken seemeth to have been rather in
a maze than in a way.  But although I am of opinion that this knowledge
may be more really and soundly inquired, even in nature, than it hath
been, yet I hold that in the end it must be hounded by religion, or else
it will be subject to deceit and delusion.  For as the substance of the
soul in the creation was not extracted out of the mass of heaven and
earth by the benediction of a producat, but was immediately inspired

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