whole train of ideas, as he remembered the occasion of it--how at a
certain time and place this word set the whole moving, seemed to
breathe new life and shed new light, and has remained the token,
meaningless in itself, which reminds him of so much.

When we come to read his letters, his speeches, his works, we come
continually on the results and proofs of this early labour. Some of the
most memorable and familiar passages of his writings are to be traced
from the storehouses which he filled in these years of preparation. An
example of this correspondence between the note-book and the composition
is to be seen in a paper belonging to this period, written apparently to
form part of a masque, or as he himself calls it, a "Conference of
Pleasure," and entitled the _Praise of Knowledge_. It is interesting
because it is the first draught which we have from him of some of the
leading ideas and most characteristic language about the defects and the
improvement of knowledge, which were afterwards embodied in the
_Advancement_ and the _Novum Organum_. The whole spirit and aim of his
great reform is summed up in the following fine passage:

"Facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to assever,
glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search,
seeking things in words, resting in a part of nature--these and the
like have been the things which have forbidden the happy match
between the mind of man and the nature of things, and in place
thereof have married it to vain notions and blind experiments....
Therefore, no doubt, the _sovereignty of man_ lieth hid in
knowledge; wherein many things are reserved which kings with their
treasures cannot buy nor with their force command; their spials and
intelligencers can give no news of them; their seamen and
discoverers cannot sail where they grow. Now we govern nature in