on nature and experience, grow and increase.

In this connection, Bacon points out that the word "antiquity" is
misleading, and makes a remark which will frequently recur in
writers of the following generations. Antiquitas seculi iuventus
mundi; what we call antiquity and are accustomed to revere as such
was the youth of the world. But it is the old age and increasing
years of the world--the time in which we are now living--that
deserves in truth to be called antiquity. We are really the
ancients, the Greeks and Romans were younger than we, in respect to
the age of the world. And as we look to an old man for greater
knowledge of the world than from a young man, so we have good reason
to expect far greater things from our own age than from antiquity,
because in the meantime the stock of knowledge has been increased by
an endless number of observations and experiments. Time is the great
discoverer, and truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Take the three inventions which were unknown to the ancients-
printing, gunpowder, and the compass. These "have changed the
appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then
in warfare, and lastly in navigation; and innumerable changes have
been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star appears to
have exercised a greater power or influence on human affairs than
these mechanical discoveries." [Footnote: Nov. Org. 129. We have
seen that these three inventions had already been classed together
as outstanding by Cardan and Le Roy. They also appear in Campanella.
Bodin, as we saw, included them in a longer list.] It was perhaps
the results of navigation and the exploration of unknown lands that
impressed Bacon more than all, as they had impressed Bodin. Let me
quote one passage.