ast a glance or two upon facts and examples and
experience, and straightway proceeded, as if invention were nothing
more than an exercise of thought, to invoke their own spirits to give
them oracles. I, on the contrary, dwelling purely and constantly among
the facts of nature, withdraw my intellect from them no further than
may suffice to let the images and rays of natural objects meet in a
point, as they do in the sense of vision; whence it follows that the
strength and excellency of the wit has but little to do in the matter.
And the same humility which I use in inventing I employ likewise in
teaching. For I do not endeavour either by triumphs of confutation,
or pleadings of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even by
the veil of obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any
majesty; which might easily be done by one who sought to give lustre
to his own name rather than light to other men's minds. I have
not sought (I say) nor do I seek either to force or ensnare men's
judgments, but I lead them to things themselves and the concordances
of things, that they may see for themselves what they have, what they
can dispute, what they can add and contribute to the common stock.
And for myself, if in anything I have been either too credulous or
too little awake and attentive, or if I have fallen off by the way and
left the inquiry incomplete, nevertheless I so present these things
naked and open, that my errors can be marked and set aside before the
mass of knowledge be further infected by them; and it will be easy
also for others to continue and carry on my labours. And by these
means I suppose that I have established for ever a true and lawful
marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty, the unkind
and ill-starred divorce and separation of which has thrown into
confusion all the affairs of the human family.

Wherefore, seeing that these things do not depend upon myself, at the
outset of the work I most humbly and fervently pray to God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, that remembering the sorrows of
mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life wherein we wear out days
few and evil, they will vouchsafe through my hands to endow the human
family with new mercies. This likewise I humbly pray, that things
human may not interfere with things divine, and that from the opening
of the ways of sense and the increase of natural light there may arise
in our minds no incredulity or darkness with