Men are deplorably ignorant with respect to natural things, an modern philosophers, as though dreaming in the darkness, must be aroused and taught the uses of things, the dealing with things; they must be made to quit the sort of learning that comes only from books, and that rests only on vain arguments from probability and upon conjecture.

In: Great Books of the Western World (Volume 28), On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies and on the Great Magnet the Earth, Book First, Chapter 10