The Great Instauration (Instauratio Magna)

as they are closer to the senses, and generally lie open to common notions. But before it is permitted to reach the more remote and hidden things of Nature, it is necessarily required that a better and more perfect use and operation of the mind and human Intellect be introduced.

We, certainly, overcome by an eternal love of Truth, have committed ourselves to uncertain, arduous paths and solitudes; and relying and leaning upon Divine aid, we have sustained our mind both against the violences of opinions and, as it were, drawn-up battle lines, and against our own internal hesitations and scruples, and against the mists and clouds of things, and the phantasies flying from all sides; so that at last we might procure more faithful and secure indications for the living and for posterity. In which matter, if we have progressed at all, no other method surely opened the way to us than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human spirit. For all before us, who applied themselves to inventing arts, having cast their eyes for a little while upon things, and examples, and experience, immediately—as if invention were nothing else than a certain meditation—invoked their own spirits, in a certain manner, to offer themselves Oracles.

We, however, dwelling chastely and continually among things, do not abstract the Intellect further from Things than that the images and rays of things (as happens in the senses) may come together; whence it happens that not much is left to the powers and excellence of the Talent. And the same humility which we use in finding, we have also followed in teaching. For we do not attempt to impose or to win for these discoveries of ours any majesty, either by triumphs of refutations, or by appeals to antiquity, or by a certain usurpation of authority, or even by a veil of obscurity;