Preparative Toward Natural And Experimental History

In the history which I require and design, special care is to be taken that it be of wide range and made to the measure of the universe. For the world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding (which has been done hitherto), but the understanding to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world as it is in fact. For that fashion of taking few things into account, and pronouncing with reference to a few things, has been the ruin of everything. To resume then the divisions of natural history which I made just now --viz., that it is a history of generations, Pretergenerations, and arts --I divide the history of generations into five parts. [via]