x PREPAICE:
method, though essential, is insufficient. It must be supplemented by the method of experiment. Leven a purely geometrical proof is not convincing or con- clusive, until the execution of the diagram has enabled us to add ocular, that is to say, experimental, evidence that the demonstration ts sound. This method, moreover, will lead us into new regions into which mathematical procedure is not able to penetrate. Experimental science governs all the preceding sciences (‘domina est omnium scientiarum praecedentium )), it controls their methods; in prosecuting its own special researches it makes use of their results,
Here then ends the Ofus J/ajus as presented in the
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edition of 1733. A glance at the fourteenth and pre- ceding chapters of the Ofus fertiunz, in which the structure and purpose of the Opus A/ajus arc reviewed, will show how disastrously the suppression of the seventh section of the work has mutilated it. ‘All these foregoing sciences, says Bacon, ‘are, properly speaking, speculative. There is indeed in every science a practical side, as Avicenna teaches in the first book of his drt of Afedicive. Nevertheless, of Moral Philosophy alone can it be said that it is in the special and autonomatic sense practical, dealing as it does with human conduct with reference Lo virtie and vicc, bealitude and misery. All other sciences are called speculative: they are not concerned with the deeds of the present or fulure life affecting man’s salvation ar damnation. All procedures of art and of nature are directed to these moral actions, and exist on account of them. They are of no account except in that they help forward right action. Thus practical and operative sciences, as experimental alchemy and the rest, are regarded as speculative in reference to the
