every reputed impossibility you add what thing is extant which cometh the nearest in degree to that impossibility; to the end that by these optatives and potentials man’s inquiry may be the more awake in deducing direction of works from the speculation of causes.  And secondly, that these experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give most light to the invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner’s needle, which giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails which give the motion.

(4) Thus have I passed through natural philosophy and the deficiences thereof; wherein if I have differed from the ancient and received doctrines, and thereby shall move contradiction, for my part, as I affect not to dissent, so I purpose not to contend.  If it be truth,

“Non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylvae,”

the voice of Nature will consent, whether the voice of man do or no.  And as Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of the French for Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands to mark up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight; so I like better that entry of truth which cometh peaceably with chalk to mark up those minds which are capable to lodge and harbour it, than that which cometh with pugnacity and contention.

(5) But there remaineth a division of natural philosophy according to the report of the inquiry, and nothing concerning the matter or subject:  and that is positive and considerative, when the inquiry reporteth either an assertion or a doubt.  These doubts or non liquets are of two sorts, particular and total.  For the first, we see a good example thereof in Aristotle’s Problems which deserved to have had a better continuance; but so nevertheless as there is one point whereof warning is to be given and taken.  The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses:  the one, that it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods; when that which is not fully appearing is not collected into assertion, whereby error might draw error, but reserved in doubt; the other, that the entry of doubts are as so many suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that which if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have advised, but passed it over without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts is made to be attended and applied.  But both these commodities do scarcely countervail and inconvenience, which will intrude itself if it be not debarred; which is, that when a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it, and accordingly bend their wits.  Of this we see the familiar example in lawyers and scholars, both which, if they have once admitted a doubt, it goeth ever after authorised for a doubt.  But that use of wit and knowledge