Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: not found at all in the other; and so one science greatly aiding to the invention and augmentation of the other. And therefore without this intercourse the axioms of the sciences will fall out to be neither full nor true."l 3. Again, after shewing that one cause of the backward state of the sciences was the short period during which they had been studied, he says—" In the second place there presents itself that cause of great weight in every way, namely, that during those very ages in which the genius and learning of men have chiefly flourished, Natural Philosophy obtained the least part of human labour. And nevertheless this very thing ought to be held to be the great Mother of Sciences. For all arts and sciences if torn from this root, though perhaps they may be polished, and made fit for use, yet they will make no further progress And the age during which Natural Philosophy was seen to flourish in Greece, was but a very brief interval of time, for both in the more ancient times, the seven who were called the wise men, all except Thales, applied themselves to Moral Philosophy and civil affairs, and in later times when Socrates drew down philosophy from heaven to earth, Moral Philosophy prevailed more and more, and turned the minds of men from the Philosophy of Nature." - So again—" To this it is to be added that Natural Philosophy, even among those very men, who have nurtured it, has scarcely ever obtained the whole leisure and employment of any one, especially in these later times; except perhaps some instances of a monk in his cell, or a gentleman speculating in his country house. But the Philosophy of Nature has been made as it were a passage and a bridge to something else. And so this great Mother of the Sciences has been with wonderful indignity thrust down to t...