V

Among the parts of history which I have mentioned, the history of arts is of most use because it exhibits things in motion and leads more directly to practice. Moreover, it takes off the mask and veil from natural objects, which are commonly concealed and obscured under the variety of shapes and external appearance. Finally, the vexations of art are certainly as the bonds and handcuffs of Proteus, which betray the ultimate struggles and efforts of matter. For bodies will not be destroyed or annihilated, rather than that they will turn themselves into various forms. Upon this history, therefore, mechanical and illiberal as it may seem (all fineness and daintiness set aside), the greatest diligence must be bestowed.

Again, among the particular arts those are to be preferred which exhibit, alter, and prepare natural bodies and materials of things, such as agriculture, cookery, chemistry, dyeing, the manufacture of glass, enamel, sugar, gunpowder, artificial fires, paper, and the like. Those which consist principally in the subtle motion of the hands or instruments are of less use, such as weaving, carpentry, architecture, manufacture of mills, clocks, and the like, although these too are by no means to be neglected, both because many things occur in them which relate to the alterations of natural bodies, and because they give accurate information concerning local motion, which is a thing of great importance in very many respects.

But in the whole collection of this history of arts it is especially to be observed and constantly borne in mind that not only those experiments in each art which serve the purpose of the art itself are to be received, but likewise those which turn up anyhow by the way. For example, that locusts or crabs, which were before of the color of mud, turn red when baked is nothing to the table; but this very instance is not a bad one for investigating the nature of redness, seeing that the same thing happens in baked bricks. In like manner the fact that meat is sooner salted in winter than in summer is not only important for the cook that he may know how to regulate the pickling, but is likewise a good instance for showing the nature and impression of cold. Therefore, it would be an utter mistake to suppose that my intention would be satisfied by a collection of experiments of arts made only with the view of thereby bringing the several arts to greater perfection. For though this be an object which in many cases I do not despise, yet my meaning plainly is that all mechanical experiments should be as streams flowing from all sides into the sea of philosophy. But how to select the more important instances in every kind (which are principally and with the greatest diligence to be sought and as it were hunted out) is a point to be learned from the prerogatives of instances.