(6) But if my judgment be of any weight, the use of history
mechanical is of all others the most radical and fundamental towards
natural philosophy; such natural philosophy as shall not vanish in
the fume of subtle, sublime, or delectable speculation, but such as
shall be operative to the endowment and benefit of man's life. For
it will not only minister and suggest for the present many ingenious
practices in all trades, by a connection and transferring of the
observations of one art to the use of another, when the experiences
of several mysteries shall fall under the consideration of one man's
mind; but further, it will give a more true and real illumination
concerning causes and axioms than is hitherto attained. For like as
a man's disposition is never well known till he be crossed, nor
Proteus ever changed shapes till he was straitened and held fast; so
the passages and variations of nature cannot appear so fully in the
liberty of nature as in the trials and vexations of art.
II. (1) For civil history, it is of three kinds; not unfitly to be
compared with the three kinds of pictures or images.
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