# Quote — Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

> The natural philosophy of Democritus and some others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or proofs of nature, which they term fortune, seemeth to me... in particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; whereof both intermingled final causes, the one as a part of theology, and the other as a part of logic, which were the favourite studies respectively of both those persons. Not because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province; but because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that tract.

- Author: [Francis Bacon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/francis-bacon.md)
- Book: [The Advancement of Learning](https://www.leafyquotes.com/francis-bacon/the-advancement-of-learning.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon#The_Advancement_of_Learning_(1605)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/francis-bacon/the-advancement-of-learning/the-natural-philosophy

## More from this book

> The age of antiquity is the youth of the world. (These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/francis-bacon/the-advancement-of-learning/the-age-of-antiquity.md)

> Seek first the virtues of the mind; and other things either will come, or will not be wanted.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/francis-bacon/the-advancement-of-learning/seek-first-the.md)

> Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man's thoughts by his words, but knowing man's thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/francis-bacon/the-advancement-of-learning/touching-the-secrets.md)

Topics: [religion](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion.md)