Design. They have all things imaginable to stir them up; they have the Examples of the greatest Wits of other Countries, who have left their own Homes, to retire thither, for the Freedom of their Philosophical Studies: They have one Place (I mean the Hague) which may be soon made the very Copy of a Town in the New Atlantis; which for its Pleasantness, and for the Concourse of Men of all Conditions to it, may be counted, above all others, (except London) the most advantageously seated for this Service.
These have been the Privileges and Practices of the Royal Society, in Things foreign and native. It would now be needless to set down all the Steps of their Progress about them; how they observ'd all the Varieties of Generations and Corruptions, natural and artificial; all the Increasing and Lessenings, Agreements and Oppositions of Things; how, having found out a Cause, they have applied it to many other Effects, and the Effects to different Causes; how they are wont to change the Instruments, and Places, and Quantities of Matter, according to Occasions: and all the other Subtilties and Windings of Trial, which are almost infinite to express. I shall only, in passing, touch on these two Things, which they have most carefully consulted.
The one is, not to prescribe to themselves any certain Art of Experimenting, within which to circumscribe their Thoughts; but rather to keep themselves free, and change their Course, according to the different Circumstances that occur to them in their Operations, and the several Alterations of the Bodies on which they work. The true Experimenting has this one thing inseparable from it, never to be a fixed and settled Art, and never to be limited by constant Rules. This, perhaps, may be shewn too in other Arts; as in
