84; 56, 72, 73, 74.] In all their systems and scientific speculation "there is hardly one single experiment that has a tendency to assist mankind." Their theories were founded on opinion, and therefore science has remained stationary for the last two thousand years; whereas mechanical arts, which are founded 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.