The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [6]
8. As when physicians, needing to give infants the bitter wormwood, first spread the cup’s brim with juice and honey,
9. That the unheeding child might be cajoled as far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow a healthsome draught;
10. So now I too expound in song, soft-speaking, to touch with honey the rim of truth.
11. If one thereby might teach the world, its multitudes would cease the strife that ignorances bring,
12. Knowing truth at last, and the nature of things.
Chapter 13
1. Let us admit no more causes of natural things than are both true and sufficient to explain what we see.
2. For it is observed that nature does nothing in vain, and more is vain where less will serve.
3. Nature is pleased with simplicity, and does not need the pomp of superfluous causes.
4. Always assign the same effects to the same causes, as respiration in a man and in a beast;
5. As the geological formations of mountains in Europe and in America;
6. As the heat of our cooking fire and the heat of the sun;
7. As the reflection of light on the earth and by the planets.
8. For the same laws apply everywhere, and the phenomena of nature are the same, whether here at hand or in a distant galaxy.
9. Those qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees,
10. And which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our investigations,
11. Are to be esteemed the universal qualities of bodies everywhere.
12. For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiment, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiment.
13. We are not to ignore the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and fictions of our own devising;
14. Nor are we to part from the analogy of nature, which is simple, and always consonant to itself.
15. We know the extension of bodies only by means of our senses, and our senses do not reach into all the parts of bodies;
16. But because we perceive extension in everything that we can sense, therefore we ascribe it universally to what we cannot directly sense.
17. This is the order and discipline of science.
18. We are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined,
19. Till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be refuted, or made more accurate.
20. This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.
Chapter 14
1. I am convinced that the human intellect makes its own difficulties, not using the true, sober and judicious methods of inquiry at our disposal,
2. From which comes the manifold ignorance of things which causes innumerable mischiefs in the world.
3. Therefore let us try to see whether that commerce between the human mind and the nature of things,
4. A commerce more precious than anything on earth, for it is nothing less than the search for truth,
5. Can be perfected; or if not, yet improved to a better condition than it now displays.
6. We cannot hope that the errors which have hitherto prevailed, and which will prevail for ever if inquiry is left uninstructed and uncorrected, will correct themselves;
7. Because the early notions of things, which our minds in childhood or without education so readily and passively imbibe,
8. Are false, confused, and overhastily abstracted from the facts; nor are the secondary and subsequent notions we form from them less arbitrary and inconstant.
9. It follows that the entire fabric of human reason employed in the inquisition of nature, is badly built up, like a great structure lacking foundations.
10. For while people are occupied in admiring and applauding the false powers of the mind, they pass by and throw away its true powers,
11. Which, if supplied with proper aids, and if content to wait upon nature instead of vainly affecting to overrule her, are within its reach.
12. Such is the way to truth and the advancement