IV

In the history which I require and design, special care is to be taken that it be of wide range and made to the measure of the universe. For the world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding (which has been done hitherto), but the understanding to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world as it is in fact. For that fashion of taking few things into account, and pronouncing with reference to a few things, has been the ruin of everything. To resume then the divisions of natural history which I made just now — viz., that it is a history of generations, Pretergenerations, and arts — I divide the history of generations into five parts. The first, of ether and things celestial. The second, of meteors and the regions (as they call them) of air, viz., of the tracts which lie between the moon and the surface of the earth; to which part also (for order's sake, however the truth of the thing may be) I assign comets of whatever kind, both higher and lower. The third, of earth and sea. The fourth, of the elements (as they call them), flame or fire, air, water, earth, understanding, however, by elements, not the first principles of things, but the greater masses of natural bodies. For the nature of things is so distributed that the quantity or mass of some bodies in the universe is very great, because their configurations require a texture of matter easy and obvious, such as are those four bodies which I have mentioned; while of certain other bodies the quantity is small and weakly supplied, because the texture of matter which they require is very complex and subtle, and for the most part determinate and organic, such as are the species of natural things — metals, plants, animals. Hence I call the former kind of bodies the "greater colleges," the latter the "lesser colleges." Now the fourth part of the history is of those greater colleges — under the name of elements, as I said. And let it not be thought that I confound this fourth part with the second and third, because in each of them I have mentioned air, water, and earth. For the history of these enters into the second and third, as they are integral parts of the world, and as they relate to the fabric and configuration of the universe. But in the fourth is contained the history of their own substance and nature, as it exists in their several parts of uniform structure, and without reference to the whole. Lastly, the fifth part of the history contains the lesser colleges, or species, upon which natural history has hitherto been principally employed.

As for the history of pretergenerations, I have already said that it may be most conveniently joined with the history of generations — I mean the history of prodigies which are natural. For the superstitious history of marvels (of whatever kind) I remit to a quite separate treatise of its own; which treatise I do not wish to be undertaken now at first, but a little after, when the investigation of nature has been carried deeper.

History of arts, and of nature as changed and altered by man, or experimental history, I divide into three. For it is drawn either from mechanical arts, or from the operative part of the liberal arts, or from a number of crafts and experiments which have not yet grown into an art properly so called, and which sometimes indeed turn up in the course of most ordinary experience and do not stand at all in need of art.

As soon, therefore, as a history has been completed of all these things which I have mentioned — namely, generations, pretergenerations, arts, and experiments, it seems that nothing will remain unprovided whereby the sense can be equipped for information of the understanding. And then shall we be no longer kept dancing within little rings, like persons bewitched, but our range and circuit will be as wide as the compass of the world.