IX

There are also some things which may be usefully added to the natural history, and which will make it fitter and more convenient for the work of the interpreter, which follows. They are five.

First, questions (I do not mean as to causes but as to the fact) should be added in order to provoke and stimulate further inquiry, as in the history of earth and sea, whether the Caspian ebbs and flows, and at how many hours' interval; whether there is any southern continent or only islands, and the like.

Secondly, in any new and more subtle experiment the manner in which the experiment was conducted should be added, that men may be free to judge for themselves whether the information obtained from that experiment be trustworthy or fallacious, and also that men's industry may be roused to discover, if possible, methods more exact.

Thirdly, if in any statement there be anything doubtful or questionable, I would by no means have it suppressed or passed in silence, but plainly and perspicuously set down by way of note or admonition. For I want this primary history to be compiled with a most religious care, as if every particular were stated upon oath, seeing that it is the book of God's works and (so far as the majesty of heavenly may be compared with the humbleness of earthly things) a kind of second Scripture.

Fourthly, it would not be amiss to intersperse observations occasionally, as Pliny has done; as in the history of earth and sea, that the figure of the earth (as far as it is yet known) compared with the seas is narrow and pointed toward the south, wide and broad toward the north, the figure of the sea contrary; that the great oceans intersect the earth in channels running north and south, not east and west, except perhaps in the extreme polar regions. It is also very good to add canons (which are nothing more than certain general and catholic observations), as in the history of the heavenly bodies, that Venus is never distant more than 46 parts from the sun, Mercury never more than 23, and that the planets which are placed above the sun move slowest when they are furthest from the earth, those under the sun fastest. Moreover, there is another kind of observation to be employed, which has not yet come into use, though it be of no small importance. This is, that to the enumeration of things which are should be subjoined an enumeration of things which are not. As in the history of the heavenly bodies, that there is not found any star oblong or triangular, but that every star is globular — either globular simply, as the moon, or apparently angular, but globular in the middle, as the other stars, or apparently radiant but globular in the middle, as the sun — or that the stars are scattered about the sky in no order at all, so that there is not found among them either quincunx or square, or any other regular figure (howsoever the names be given of Delta, Crown, Cross, Chariot, etc.) scarcely so much as a straight line, except perhaps in the belt and dagger of Orion.

Fifthly, that may perhaps be of some assistance to an inquirer which is the ruin and destruction of a believer; viz., a brief review, as in passage, of the opinions now received, with their varieties and sects, that they may touch and rouse the intellect and no more.