THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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aim of a ‘regnum hominis’ touches on the ‘higher alchemy’, but the regnum was conceived as the mastery of nature, not as the transfiguration of nature or as Joachim's
‘Third Kingdom’. Especially the ‘Ars inveniendi’ in the ‘Novum organum scientiarum’ seeks to found theoretical finding and practical inventing wholly on experience
(instead of on something beyond the sensory world) and on regular induction (instead of on deductions which trust written authority). Only through observation and
analysis are the ‘constant properties’, the ‘primitive forms’ of all things discernible; only thus is the goal of knowledge achieved: ‘the production of artefacts’.
Knowledge of earlier inventive dreams is also supposed to be useful for this, but essentially so that they can be used to emphasize that which seemed daringor
impossible to men and which was nevertheless to be found in their technological dreams. The record of realized, and particularly of unrealized plans also gave useful
hints for inventive ideas which hitherto lay ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules’: but only the ship of the real art of experimentation will reach the golden Gardens of the
Hesperides. Only in this way according to Bacon do the old fairytales come true, they are not realized by continually being told walking the same old treadmill in an
increasingly garrulous, increasingly epigonic fashion. And just like irregular anticipation, the quarrelsome lumber of words and deductions has an unfruitful effect: ‘so that
the state of learning as it now is appears to be represented to the life in the old fable of Scylla, who had the head and face of a virgin, but her womb was hung round
with barking monsters, from which she could not be delivered. For in like manner the sciences to which we are accustomed have certain general positions which are
specious and flattering; but as soon as they come to particulars, which are as the parts of generation, when they should produce fruit and works, then arise contentions
and barking disputations, which are the end of the matter and all the issue they can yield’ (Magna Instauratio, Preface). Knowledge is power, also the power to fulfil the
old dreams of inventors, and indeed those of magic, if not to surpass them in boldness: ‘For as for the natural magic whereof now there is mention in books, containing
certain credulous and superstitious conceits and observations of Sympathies and Antipathies and hidden properties, and some frivolous experiments, strange rather by
disguisement than in themselves; it is as far differing in truth of nature from such knowledge as we require, as the story of king Arthur of Britain, or Hugh of Bordeaux,
differs from Caesar's commentaries in truth of story. For it is manifest that Caesar did greater things de vero than those imaginary heroes were feigned to