These methods are useful, and of
importance
to our inquiry, although
attended generally with fallacy: for many natures are assigned and
attributed to the separate bodies, as if they had previously existed in
the compound, which, in reality, are recently bestowed and superinduced
by fire and heat, and the other modes of separation.
attended generally with fallacy: for many natures are assigned and
attributed to the separate bodies, as if they had previously existed in
the compound, which, in reality, are recently bestowed and superinduced
by fire and heat, and the other modes of separation.
Bacon
lxxviii.
[36] Gorgias of Leontium went to Athens in 424 B. C. He and Polus were
disciples of Empedocles, whom we have already noticed (Aphorism 63),
where he sustained the three famous propositions, that nothing exists,
that nothing can be known, and that it is out of the power of man
to transmit or communicate intelligence. He is reckoned one of the
earliest writers on the art of rhetoric, and for that reason, Plato
called his elegant dialogue on that subject after his name.
[37] Chrysippus, a stoic philosopher of Soli in Cilicia, Campestris,
born in 280, died in the 143d Olympiad, 208 B. C. He was equally
distinguished for natural abilities and industry, seldom suffering
a day to elapse without writing 500 lines. He wrote several hundred
volumes, of which three hundred were on logical subjects; but in all,
borrowed largely from others. He was very fond of the _sorites_ in
argument, which is hence called by Persius the heap of Chrysippus.
He was called the Column of the Portico, a name given to the Stoical
School from Zeno, its founder, who had given his lessons under the
portico.
Carneades, born about 215, died in 130. He attached himself to
Chrysippus, and sustained with _éclat_ the scepticism of the academy.
The Athenians sent him with Critolaus and Diogenes as ambassador
to Rome, where he attracted the attention of his new auditory by
the subtilty of his reasoning, and the fluency and vehemence of his
language. Before Galba and Cato the Censor, he harangued with great
variety of thought and copiousness of diction in praise of justice.
The next day, to establish his doctrine of the uncertainty of human
knowledge, he undertook to refute all his arguments. He maintained
with the New Academy, that the senses, the imagination, and the
understanding frequently deceive us, and therefore cannot be infallible
judges of truth, but that from the impressions produced on the mind by
means of the senses, we infer appearances of truth or probabilities.
Nevertheless, with respect to the conduct of life, Carneades held that
probable opinions are a sufficient guide.
Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, of Colophon, born in 556, the founder
of the Eleatic school, which owes its fame principally to Parmenides.
Wild in his opinions about astronomy, he supposed that the stars were
extinguished every morning, and rekindled at night; that eclipses were
occasioned by the temporary extinction of the sun, and that there were
several suns for the convenience of the different climates of the
earth. Yet this man held the chair of philosophy at Athens for seventy
years.
Philolaus, a Pythagorean philosopher of Crotona, B. C. 374. He first
supported the diurnal motion of the earth round its axis, and its
annual motion round the sun. Cicero (Acad. iv. 39) has ascribed this
opinion to the Syracusan philosopher Nicetas, and likewise to Plato.
From this passage, it is most probable that Copernicus got the idea of
the system he afterward established. Bacon, in the Advancement of Human
Learning, charges Gilbert with restoring the doctrines of Philolaus,
because he ventured to support the Copernican theory. --_Ed. _
[38] Bacon is equally conspicuous for the use and abuse of analogical
illustrations. The levity, as Stuart Mill very properly observes, by
which substances float on a stream, and the levity which is synonymous
with worthlessness, have nothing beside the name in common; and to
show how little value there is in the figure, we need only change the
word into buoyancy, to turn the semblance of Bacon’s argument against
himself. --_Ed. _
[39] We have before observed, that the New Academy did not profess
skepticism, but the ἀκατάληψια, or incomprehensibility of the absolute
essences of things. Even modern physicists are not wanting, to assert
with this school that the utmost knowledge we can obtain is relative,
and necessarily short of absolute certainty. It is not without an
appearance of truth that these philosophers maintain that our ideas
and perceptions do not express the nature of the things which they
represent, but only the effects of the peculiar organs by which they
are conveyed to the understanding, so that were these organs changed,
we should have different conceptions of their nature. That constitution
of air which is dark to man is luminous to bats and owls.
[40] Owing to the universal prevalence of Aristotelism.
[41] It must be remembered, that when Bacon wrote, algebra was in its
infancy, and the doctrine of units and infinitesimals undiscovered.
[42] Because the vulgar make up the overwhelming majority in such
decisions, and generally allow their judgments to be swayed by passion
or prejudice.
[43] See end of Axiom lxi. The subject extends to Axiom xc.
[44] If we adopt the statement of Herodotus, who places the Homeric
era 400 years back from his time, Homer lived about 900 years before
Christ. On adding this number to the sixteen centuries of the Christian
era which had elapsed up to Bacon’s time, we get the twenty-five
centuries he mentions. The Homeric epoch is the furthest point in
antiquity from which Bacon could reckon with any degree of certainty.
Hesiod, if he were not contemporary, immediately preceded him.
The epoch of Greek philosophy may be included between Thales and
Plato, that is, from the 35th to the 88th Olympiad; that of the Roman,
between Terence and Pliny. The modern revolution, in which Bacon is
one of the central figures, took its rise from the time of Dante and
Petrarch, who lived at the commencement of the fourteenth century; and
to which, on account of the invention of printing, and the universal
spread of literature, which has rendered a second destruction of
learning impossible, it is difficult to foresee any other end than the
extinction of the race of man. --_Ed. _
[45] The allusion is evidently to Roger Bacon and Réné Descartes. --_Ed. _
[46] From the abuse of the scholastics, who mistook the _à priori_
method, the deductive syllogism, for the entire province of
logic. --_Ed. _
[47] See Aphorism xcv.
[48] The incongruity to which Bacon alludes appears to spring from
confounding two things, which are not only distinct, but affect human
knowledge in inverse proportion, viz. , the experience which terminates
with life, with that experience which one century transmits to
another. --_Ed. _
[49] The Chinese characters resemble, in many respects, the
hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, being adapted to represent ideas, not
sounds.
[50] See Axiom 75.
[51] The methods by which Newton carried the rule and compass to the
boundaries of creation is a sufficient comment on the sagacity of the
text. The same cause which globulizes a bubble, has rounded the earth,
and the same law which draws a stone to its surface, keeps the moon in
her orbit. It was by calculating and ascertaining these principles upon
substances entirely at his disposal that this great philosopher was
enabled to give us a key to unlock the mysteries of the universe. --_Ed. _
[52] See the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, where Socrates is represented as
chasing Jupiter out of the sky, by resolving thunderstorms into aërial
concussions and whirlwinds. --_Ed. _
[53] Robespierre was the latest victim of this bigotry. In his younger
days he attempted to introduce Franklin’s lightning conductor into
France, but was persecuted by those whose lives he sought to protect,
as one audaciously striving to avert the designs of Providence. --_Ed. _
[54] We can hardly agree with the text. The scholastics, in building
up a system of divinity, certainly had recourse to the deductive
syllogism, because the inductive was totally inapplicable, except as
a verificatory process. With regard to the technical form in which
they marshalled their arguments, which is what our author aims at in
his censure, they owed nothing at all to Aristotle, the conducting a
dispute in naked syllogistic fashion having originated entirely with
themselves. --_Ed. _
[55] Bacon cannot be supposed to allude to those divines who have
attempted to show that the progress of physical science is confirmatory
of revelation, but only to such as have built up a system of faith out
of their own refinements on nature and revelation, as Patricius and
Emanuel Swedenborg. --_Ed. _
[56] Daniel xii. 4.
[57] Bacon, in this Aphorism, appears to have entertained a fair
idea of the use of the inductive and deductive methods in scientific
inquiry, though his want of geometrical knowledge must have hindered
him from accurately determining the precise functions of each, as
it certainly led him in other parts of the Organon (V. Aph. 82), to
undervalue the deductive, and, as he calls it, the dogmatic method, and
to rely too much upon empiricism. --_Ed. _
[58] The reader may consult the note of the 23d Aphorism for the fault
which Bacon censures, and, if he wish to pursue the subject further,
may read Plato’s Timæus, where that philosopher explains his system
in detail. Bacon, however, is hardly consistent in one part of his
censure, for he also talks about the spirit and appetites of inanimate
substances, and that so frequently, as to preclude the supposition that
he is employing metaphor. --_Ed. _
[59] Proclus flourished about the beginning of the fifth century,
and was the successor of Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblicus, who, in
the two preceding centuries, had revived the doctrines of Plato, and
assailed the Christian religion. The allusion in the text must be
assigned to Iamblicus, who, in the fourth century, had republished
the Pythagorean theology of numbers, and endeavored to construct the
world out of arithmetic, thinking everything could be solved by the
aid of proportions and geometry. Bacon must not be understood in the
text to censure the use but the abuse of mathematics and physical
investigations, as in the “De Augmentis” (lib. iv. c. 6), he enumerates
the multiplicity of demonstration scientific facts admit of, from this
source. --_Ed. _
[60] See Livy, lib. ix. c. 17, where, in a digression on the probable
effect of a contest between Rome and Alexander the Great, he says: “Non
cum Dario rem esse dixisset: quem mulierum ac spadonum agmen trahentem
inter purpuram atque aurum, oneratum fortunæ apparatibus, prædam
veriùs quam hostem, nihil aliud quam ausus vana contemnere, incruentus
devicit. ”
[61] The lowest axioms are such as spring from simple experience--such
as in chemistry, that animal substances yield no fixed salt by
calcination; in music, that concords intermixed with discords make
harmony, etc. Intermediate axioms advance a step further, being the
result of reflection, which, applied to our experimental knowledge,
deduces laws from them, such as in optics of the first degree of
generality, that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of
reflection; and in mechanics, Kepler’s three laws of motion, while
his general law, that all bodies attract each other with forces
proportional to their masses, and inversely as the squares of their
distances, may be taken as one of the highest axioms. Yet so far is
this principle from being only notional or abstract, it has presented
us with a key which fits into the intricate wards of the heavens, and
has laid bare to our gaze the principal mechanism of the universe.
But natural philosophy in Bacon’s day had not advanced beyond
intermediate axioms, and the term notional or abstract is applied to
those general axioms then current, not founded on the solid principles
of inductive inquiry, but based upon _à priori_ reasoning and airy
metaphysics. --_Ed. _
[62] This hope has been abundantly realized in the discovery of gravity
and the decomposition of light, mainly by the inductive method. To a
better philosophy we may also attribute the discovery of electricity,
galvanism and their mutual connection with each other, and magnetism,
the inventions of the air-pump, steam-engine and the chronometer.
[63] As Bacon very frequently cites these authors, a slight notice
of their labors may not be unacceptable to the reader. Bernardinus
Telesius, born at Cosenza, in 1508, combated the Aristotelian system
in a work entitled “De Rerum Natura juxta propria principia,” _i. e. _,
according to principles of his own. The proem of the work announces his
design was to show that “the construction of the world, the magnitude
and nature of the bodies contained in it, are not to be investigated by
reasoning, which was done by the ancients, but are to be apprehended
by the senses, and collected from the things themselves. ” He had,
however, no sooner laid down this principle than he departed from it
in practice, and pursued the deductive method he so much condemned in
his predecessors. His first step was an assumption of principles as
arbitrary as any of the empirical notions of antiquity; at the outset
of his book he very quietly takes it for granted that heat is the
principle of motion, cold of immobility, matter being assumed as the
corporeal substratum, in which these incorporeal and active agents
carry on their operations. Out of these abstract and ill-defined
conceptions Telesius builds up a system quite as complete, symmetrical,
and imaginative as any of the structures of antiquity.
Francis Patricius, born at Cherso, in Dalmatia, about 1529, was another
physicist who rose up against Aristotle, and announced the dawn of a
new philosophy. In 1593 appeared his “Nova de Universis Philosophia. ”
He lays down a string of axioms, in which scholastic notions, physical
discoveries, and theological dogmas, are strangely commingled, and
erects upon them a system which represents all the grotesque features
of theological empiricism.
Severinus, born in Jutland, in 1529, published an attack on Aristotle’s
natural history, but adopted fantasies which the Stagyrite ridiculed
in his own day. He was a follower of Paracelsus, a Swiss enthusiast
of the fifteenth century, who ignored the ancient doctrine of the
four elements for salt, sulphur and mercury, and allied chemistry and
medicine with mysticism. --_Ed. _
[64] Bacon’s apology is sound, and completely answers those German
and French critics, who have refused him a niche in the philosophical
pantheon. One German commentator, too modest to reveal his name,
accuses Bacon of ignorance of the calculus, though, in his day, Wallis
had not yet stumbled upon the laws of continuous fractions; while
Count de Maistre, in a coarse attack upon his genius, expresses his
astonishment at finding Bacon unacquainted with discoveries which were
not heard of till a century after his death. --_Ed. _
[65] Philip of Macedon.
[66] See Plato’s Timæus.
[67] The saying of Philocrates when he differed from Demosthenes. --_Ed. _
[68] The old error of placing the deductive syllogism in antagonism to
the inductive, as if they were not both parts of one system or refused
to cohere together. So far from there being any radical opposition
between them, it would not be difficult to show that Bacon’s method
was syllogistic in his sense of the term. For the suppressed premise
of every Baconian enthymeme, viz. , the acknowledged uniformity of the
laws of nature as stated in the axiom, whatever has once occurred will
occur again, must be assumed as the basis of every conclusion which he
draws before we can admit its legitimacy. The opposition, therefore,
of Bacon’s method could not be directed against the old logic, for
it assumed and exemplified its principles, but rather to the abusive
application which the ancients made of this science, on turning its
powers to the development of abstract principles which they imagined
to be pregnant with the solution of the latent mysteries of the
universe. Bacon justly overthrew these ideal notions, and accepted of
no principle as a basis which was not guaranteed by actual experiment
and observation; and so far he laid the foundations of a sound
philosophy by turning the inductive logic to its proper account in the
interpretation of nature.
[69] This is the opening of the Sixth Book of Lucretius. Bacon probably
quoted from memory; the lines are--
“Primæ frugiferos fœtus mortalibus ægris
Dididerunt quondam præclaro nomine Athenæ
Et recreaverunt,” etc.
The teeming corn, that feeble mortals crave,
First, and long since, renowned Athens gave,
And cheered their life--then taught to frame their laws.
[70] Prov. xxv. 2.
APHORISMS--BOOK II
ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, OR THE REIGN OF MAN
I. To generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures, upon a
given body, is the labor and aim of human power: while to discover the
form or true difference of a given nature, or the nature[71] to which
such nature is owing, or source from which it emanates (for these terms
approach nearest to an explanation of our meaning), is the labor and
discovery of human knowledge; and subordinate to these primary labors
are two others of a secondary nature and inferior stamp. Under the
first must be ranked the transformation of concrete bodies from one to
another, which is possible within certain limits; under the second, the
discovery, in every species of generation and motion, of the latent
and uninterrupted process from the manifest efficient and manifest
subject matter up to the given form: and a like discovery of the latent
conformation of bodies which are at rest instead of being in motion.
II. The unhappy state of man’s actual knowledge is manifested even
by the common assertions of the vulgar. It is rightly laid down that
true knowledge is that which is deduced from causes. The division of
four causes also is not amiss: matter, form, the efficient, and end
or final cause. [72] Of these, however, the latter is so far from
being beneficial, that it even corrupts the sciences, except in the
intercourse of man with man. The discovery of form is considered
desperate. As for the efficient cause and matter (according to the
present system of inquiry and the received opinions concerning them,
by which they are placed remote from, and without any latent process
toward form), they are but desultory and superficial, and of scarcely
any avail to real and active knowledge. Nor are we unmindful of our
having pointed out and corrected above the error of the human mind, in
assigning the first qualities of essence to forms. [73] For although
nothing exists in nature except individual bodies,[74] exhibiting clear
individual effects according to particular laws, yet in each branch of
learning, that very law, its investigation, discovery, and development,
are the foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore,
and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term
form,[75] adopting that word because it has grown into common use, and
is of familiar occurrence.
III. He who has learned the cause of a particular nature (such as
whiteness or heat), in particular subjects only, has acquired but
an imperfect knowledge: as he who can induce a certain effect upon
particular substances only, among those which are susceptible of it,
has acquired but an imperfect power. But he who has only learned the
efficient and material cause (which causes are variable and mere
vehicles conveying form to particular substances) may perhaps arrive
at some new discoveries in matters of a similar nature, and prepared
for the purpose, but does not stir the limits of things which are much
more deeply rooted; while he who is acquainted with forms, comprehends
the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct from each
other. He can disclose and bring forward, therefore (though it has
never yet been done), things which neither the vicissitudes of nature,
nor the industry of experiment, nor chance itself, would ever have
brought about, and which would forever have escaped man’s thoughts;
from the discovery of forms, therefore, results genuine theory and free
practice.
IV. Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an
identity between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet,
on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling upon
abstractions, it is by far the safest method to commence and build
up the sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the
practical division, and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical.
We must consider, therefore, what precepts, or what direction or guide,
a person would most desire, in order to generate and superinduce any
nature upon a given body: and this not in abstruse, but in the plainest
language.
For instance, if a person should wish to superinduce the yellow color
of gold upon silver, or an additional weight (observing always the laws
of matter) or transparency on an opaque stone, or tenacity in glass,
or vegetation on a substance which is not vegetable, we must (I say)
consider what species of precept or guide this person would prefer.
And, first, he will doubtless be anxious to be shown some method that
will neither fail in effect, nor deceive him in the trial of it;
secondly, he will be anxious that the prescribed method should not
restrict him and tie him down to peculiar means, and certain particular
methods of acting; for he will, perhaps, be at loss, and without the
power or opportunity of collecting and procuring such means. Now if
there be other means and methods (besides those prescribed) of creating
such a nature, they will perhaps be of such a kind as are in his
power, yet by the confined limits of the precept he will be deprived
of reaping any advantage from them; thirdly, he will be anxious to be
shown something not so difficult as the required effect itself, but
approaching more nearly to practice.
We will lay this down, therefore, as the genuine and perfect rule of
practice, that it should be certain, free and preparatory, or having
relation to practice. And this is the same thing as the discovery of a
true form; for the form of any nature is such, that when it is assigned
the particular nature infallibly follows. It is, therefore, always
present when that nature is present, and universally attests such
presence, and is inherent in the whole of it. The same form is of such
a character, that if it be removed the particular nature infallibly
vanishes. It is, therefore, absent, whenever that nature is absent,
and perpetually testifies such absence, and exists in no other nature.
Lastly, the true form is such, that it deduces the particular nature
from some source of essence existing in many subjects, and more known
(as they term it) to nature, than the form itself. Such, then, is our
determination and rule with regard to a genuine and perfect theoretical
axiom, that a nature be found convertible with a given nature, and yet
such as to limit the more known nature, in the manner of a real genus.
But these two rules, the practical and theoretical, are in fact the
same, and that which is most useful in practice is most correct in
theory.
V. But the rule or axiom for the transformation of bodies is of two
kinds. The first regards the body as an aggregate or combination of
simple natures. Thus, in gold are united the following circumstances:
it is yellow, heavy, of a certain weight, malleable and ductile to a
certain extent; it is not volatile, loses part of its substance by
fire, melts in a particular manner, is separated and dissolved by
particular methods, and so of the other natures observable in gold.
An axiom, therefore, of this kind deduces the subject from the forms
of simple natures; for he who has acquired the forms and methods of
superinducing yellowness, weight, ductility, stability, deliquescence,
solution, and the like, and their degrees and modes, will consider and
contrive how to unite them in any body, so as to transform[76] it into
gold. And this method of operating belongs to primary action; for it is
the same thing to produce one or many simple natures, except that man
is more confined and restricted in his operations, if many be required,
on account of the difficulty of uniting many natures together. It must,
however, be observed, that this method of operating (which considers
natures as simple though in a concrete body) sets out from what is
constant, eternal, and universal in nature, and opens such broad paths
to human power, as the thoughts of man can in the present state of
things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself.
The second kind of axiom (which depends on the discovery of the latent
process) does not proceed by simple natures, but by concrete bodies,
as they are found in nature and in its usual course. For instance,
suppose the inquiry to be, from what beginnings, in what manner, and by
what process gold or any metal or stone is generated from the original
menstruum, or its elements, up to the perfect mineral: or, in like
manner, by what process plants are generated, from the first concretion
of juices in the earth, or from seeds, up to the perfect plant, with
the whole successive motion, and varied and uninterrupted efforts of
nature; and the same inquiry be made as to a regularly deduced system
of the generation of animals from coition to birth, and so on of other
bodies.
Nor is this species of inquiry confined to the mere generation of
bodies, but it is applicable to other changes and labors of nature.
For instance, where an inquiry is made into the whole series and
continued operation of the nutritive process, from the first reception
of the food to its complete assimilation to the recipient;[77] or
into the voluntary motion of animals, from the first impression of
the imagination, and the continuous effects of the spirits, up to the
bending and motion of the joints; or into the free motion of the tongue
and lips, and other accessories which give utterance to articulate
sounds. For all these investigations relate to concrete or associated
natures artificially brought together, and take into consideration
certain particular and special habits of nature, and not those
fundamental and general laws which constitute forms. It must, however,
be plainly owned, that this method appears more prompt and easy, and of
greater promise than the primary one.
In like manner the operative branch, which answers to this
contemplative branch, extends and advances its operation from that
which is usually observed in nature, to other subjects immediately
connected with it, or not very remote from such immediate connection.
But the higher and radical operations upon nature depend entirely
on the primary axioms. Besides, even where man has not the means
of acting, but only of acquiring knowledge, as in astronomy (for
man cannot act upon, change, or transform the heavenly bodies), the
investigation of facts or truth, as well as the knowledge of causes
and coincidences, must be referred to those primary and universal
axioms that regard simple natures; such as the nature of spontaneous
rotation, attraction, or the magnetic force, and many others which
are more common than the heavenly bodies themselves. For let no one
hope to determine the question whether the earth or heaven revolve in
the diurnal motion, unless he have first comprehended the nature of
spontaneous rotation.
VI. But the latent process of which we speak, is far from being obvious
to men’s minds, beset as they now are. For we mean not the measures,
symptoms, or degrees of any process which can be exhibited in the
bodies themselves, but simply a continued process, which, for the most
part, escapes the observation of the senses.
For instance, in all generations and transformations of bodies, we must
inquire, what is in the act of being lost and escaping, what remains,
what is being added, what is being diluted, what is being contracted,
what is being united, what is being separated, what is continuous, what
is broken off, what is urging forward, what impedes, what predominates,
what is subservient, and many other circumstances.
Nor are these inquiries again to be made in the mere generation
and transformation of bodies only, but in all other alterations and
fluctuations we must in like manner inquire; what precedes, what
succeeds, what is quick, what is slow, what produces and what governs
motion, and the like. All which matters are unknown and unattempted by
the sciences, in their present heavy and inactive state. For, since
every natural act is brought about by the smallest efforts,[78] or at
least such as are too small to strike our senses, let no one hope that
he will be able to direct or change nature unless he have properly
comprehended and observed these efforts.
VII. In like manner, the investigation and discovery of the latent
conformation in bodies is no less new, than the discovery of the
latent process and form. For we as yet are doubtless only admitted to
the antechamber of nature, and do not prepare an entrance into her
presence-room. But nobody can endue a given body with a new nature, or
transform it successfully and appropriately into a new body, without
possessing a complete knowledge of the body so to be changed or
transformed. For he will run into vain, or, at least, into difficult
and perverse methods, ill adapted to the nature of the body upon which
he operates. A clear path, therefore, toward this object also must be
thrown open, and well supported.
Labor is well and usefully bestowed upon the anatomy of organized
bodies, such as those of men and animals, which appears to be a subtile
matter, and a useful examination of nature. The species of anatomy,
however, is that of first sight, open to the senses, and takes place
only in organized bodies. It is obvious, and of ready access, when
compared with the real anatomy of latent conformation in bodies which
are considered similar, particularly in specific objects and their
parts; as those of iron, stone, and the similar parts of plants and
animals, as the root, the leaf, the flower, the flesh, the blood,
and bones, etc. Yet human industry has not completely neglected this
species of anatomy; for we have an instance of it in the separation of
similar bodies by distillation, and other solutions, which shows the
dissimilarity of the compound by the union of the homogeneous parts.
These methods are useful, and of importance to our inquiry, although
attended generally with fallacy: for many natures are assigned and
attributed to the separate bodies, as if they had previously existed in
the compound, which, in reality, are recently bestowed and superinduced
by fire and heat, and the other modes of separation. Besides, it is,
after all, but a small part of the labor of discovering the real
conformation in the compound, which is so subtile and nice, that it is
rather confused and lost by the operation of the fire, than discovered
and brought to light.
A separation and solution of bodies, therefore, is to be effected, not
by fire indeed, but rather by reasoning and true induction, with the
assistance of experiment, and by a comparison with other bodies, and a
reduction to those simple natures and their forms which meet, and are
combined in the compound; and we must assuredly pass from Vulcan to
Minerva, if we wish to bring to light the real texture and conformation
of bodies, upon which every occult and (as it is sometimes called)
specific property and virtue of things depends, and whence also every
rule of powerful change and transformation is deduced.
For instance, we must examine what spirit is in every body,[79]
what tangible essence; whether that spirit is copious and exuberant,
or meagre and scarce, fine or coarse, aëriform or igniform, active
or sluggish, weak or robust, progressive or retrograde, abrupt or
continuous, agreeing with external and surrounding objects, or
differing from them, etc. In like manner must we treat tangible essence
(which admits of as many distinctions as the spirit), and its hairs,
fibres, and varied texture. Again, the situation of the spirit in
the corporeal mass, its pores, passages, veins, and cells, and the
rudiments or first essays of the organic body, are subject to the
same examination. In these, however, as in our former inquiries, and
therefore in the whole investigation of latent conformation, the only
genuine and clear light which completely dispels all darkness and
subtile difficulties, is admitted by means of the primary axioms.
VIII. This method will not bring us to atoms,[80] which takes for
granted the vacuum, and immutability of matter (neither of which
hypotheses is correct), but to the real particles such as we discover
them to be. Nor is there any ground for alarm at this refinement
as if it were inexplicable, for, on the contrary, the more inquiry
is directed to simple natures, the more will everything be placed
in a plain and perspicuous light, since we transfer our attention
from the complicated to the simple, from the incommensurable to
the commensurable, from surds to rational quantities, from the
indefinite and vague to the definite and certain; as when we arrive
at the elements of letters, and the simple tones of concords. The
investigation of nature is best conducted when mathematics are applied
to physics. Again, let none be alarmed at vast numbers and fractions,
for in calculation it is as easy to set down or to reflect upon a
thousand as a unit, or the thousandth part of an integer as an integer
itself.
IX. [81] From the two kinds of axioms above specified, arise the two
divisions of philosophy and the sciences, and we will use the commonly
adopted terms which approach the nearest to our meaning, in our own
sense. Let the investigation of forms, which (in reasoning at least,
and after their own laws), are eternal and immutable, constitute
metaphysics,[82] and let the investigation of the efficient cause of
matter, latent process, and latent conformation (which all relate
merely to the ordinary course of nature, and not to her fundamental and
eternal laws), constitute physics. Parallel to these, let there be two
practical divisions; to physics that of mechanics, and to metaphysics
that of magic, in the purest sense of the term, as applied to its ample
means, and its command over nature.
X. The object of our philosophy being thus laid down, we proceed to
precepts, in the most clear and regular order. The signs for the
interpretation of nature comprehend two divisions; the first regards
the eliciting or creating of axioms from experiment, the second the
deducing or deriving of new experiments from axioms. The first admits
of three subdivisions into ministrations. 1. To the senses. 2. To the
memory. 3. To the mind or reason.
For we must first prepare as a foundation for the whole, a complete
and accurate natural and experimental history. We must not imagine or
invent, but discover the acts and properties of nature.
But natural and experimental history is so varied and diffuse, that
it confounds and distracts the understanding unless it be fixed
and exhibited in due order. We must, therefore, form tables and
co-ordinations of instances, upon such a plan, and in such order that
the understanding may be enabled to act upon them.
Even when this is done, the understanding, left to itself and to its
own operation, is incompetent and unfit to construct its axioms without
direction and support. Our third ministration, therefore, must be true
and legitimate induction, the very key of interpretation. We must
begin, however, at the end, and go back again to the others.
XI. The investigation of forms proceeds thus: a nature being given, we
must first present to the understanding all the known instances which
agree in the same nature, although the subject matter be considerably
diversified. And this collection must be made as a mere history, and
without any premature reflection, or too great degree of refinement.
For instance; take the investigation of the form of heat.
_Instances agreeing in the Form of Heat_
1. The rays of the sun, particularly in summer, and at noon.
2. The same reflected and condensed, as between mountains, or along
walls, and particularly in burning mirrors.
3. Ignited meteors.
4. Burning lightning.
5. Eruptions of flames from the cavities of mountains, etc.
6. Flame of every kind.
7. Ignited solids.
8. Natural warm baths.
9. Warm or heated liquids.
10. Warm vapors and smoke; and the air itself, which admits a most
powerful and violent heat if confined, as in reverberating furnaces.
11. Damp hot weather, arising from the constitution of the air, without
any reference to the time of the year.
12. Confined and subterraneous air in some caverns, particularly in
winter.
13. All shaggy substances, as wool, the skins of animals, and the
plumage of birds, contain some heat.
14. All bodies, both solid and liquid, dense and rare (as the air
itself), placed near fire for any time.
15. Sparks arising from the violent percussion of flint and steel.
16. All bodies rubbed violently, as stone, wood, cloth, etc. , so that
rudders, and axles of wheels, sometimes catch fire, and the West
Indians obtain fire by attrition.
17. Green and moist vegetable matter confined and rubbed together,
as roses, peas in baskets; so hay, if it be damp when stacked, often
catches fire.
18. Quicklime sprinkled with water.
19. Iron, when first dissolved by acids in a glass, and without any
application to fire; the same of tin, but not so intensely.
20. Animals, particularly internally; although the heat is not
perceivable by the touch in insects, on account of their small size.
21. Horse dung, and the like excrement from other animals, when fresh.
22. Strong oil of sulphur and of vitriol exhibit the operation of heat
in burning linen.
23. As does the oil of marjoram, and like substances, in burning the
bony substance of the teeth.
24. Strong and well rectified spirits of wine exhibit the same effects;
so that white of eggs when thrown into it grows hard and white, almost
in the same manner as when boiled, and bread becomes burned and brown
as if toasted.
25. Aromatic substances and warm plants, as the dracunculus [arum], old
nasturtium, etc. , which, though they be not warm to the touch (whether
whole or pulverized), yet are discovered by the tongue and palate to be
warm and almost burning when slightly masticated.
26. Strong vinegar and all acids, on any part of the body not clothed
with the epidermis, as the eye, tongue, or any wounded part, or where
the skin is removed, excite a pain differing but little from that
produced by heat.
27. Even a severe and intense cold produces a sensation of burning. [83]
“Nec Boreæ penetrabile frigus adurit. ”
28. Other instances.
We are wont to call this a table of existence and presence.
XII. We must next present to the understanding instances which do not
admit of the given nature, for form (as we have observed) ought no less
to be absent where the given nature is absent, than to be present where
it is present. If, however, we were to examine every instance, our
labor would be infinite.
Negatives, therefore, must be classed under the affirmatives, and the
want of the given nature must be inquired into more particularly in
objects which have a very close connection with those others in which
it is present and manifest. And this we are wont to term a table of
deviation or of absence in proximity.
_Proximate Instances wanting the Nature of Heat_
The rays of the moon, stars, and comets, are not found to be warm to
the touch, nay, the severest cold has been observed to take place
at the full of the moon. Yet the larger fixed stars are supposed to
increase and render more intense the heat of the sun, as he approaches
them, when the sun is in the sign of the Lion, for instance, and in the
dog-days. [84]
The rays of the sun in what is called the middle region of the air
give no heat, to account for which the commonly assigned reason is
satisfactory; namely, that that region is neither sufficiently near to
the body of the sun whence the rays emanate, nor to the earth whence
they are reflected. And the fact is manifested by snow being perpetual
on the tops of mountains, unless extremely lofty. But it is observed,
on the other hand, by some, that at the Peak of Teneriffe, and also
among the Andes of Peru, the tops of the mountains are free from snow,
which only lies in the lower part as you ascend. Besides, the air on
the summit of these mountains is found to be by no means cold, but only
thin and sharp; so much so, that in the Andes it pricks and hurts the
eyes from its extreme sharpness, and even excites the orifice of the
stomach and produces vomiting. The ancients also observed, that the
rarity of the air on the summit of Olympus was such, that those who
ascended it were obliged to carry sponges moistened with vinegar and
water, and to apply them now and then to their nostrils, as the air was
not dense enough for their respiration; on the summit of which mountain
it is also related, there reigned so great a serenity and calm, free
from rain, snow, or wind, that the letters traced upon the ashes of the
sacrifices on the altar of Jupiter, by the fingers of those who had
offered them, would remain undisturbed till the next year. Those even,
who at this day go to the top of the Peak of Teneriffe, walk by night
and not in the daytime, and are advised and pressed by their guides, as
soon as the sun rises, to make haste in their descent, on account of
the danger (apparently arising from the rarity of the atmosphere), lest
their breathing should be relaxed and suffocated. [85]
The reflection of the solar rays in the polar regions is found to
be weak and inefficient in producing heat, so that the Dutch, who
wintered in Nova Zembla, and expected that their vessel would be
freed about the beginning of July from the obstruction of the mass of
ice which had blocked it up, were disappointed and obliged to embark
in their boat. Hence the direct rays of the sun appear to have but
little power even on the plain, and when reflected, unless they are
multiplied and condensed, which takes place when the sun tends more
to the perpendicular; for, then, the incidence of the rays occurs at
more acute angles, so that the reflected rays are nearer to each other,
while, on the contrary, when the sun is in a very oblique position,
the angles of incidence are very obtuse, and the reflected rays at a
greater distance. In the meantime it must be observed, that there may
be many operations of the solar rays, relating, too, to the nature of
heat, which are not proportioned to our touch, so that, with regard to
us, they do not tend to produce warmth, but, with regard to some other
bodies, have their due effect in producing it.
Let the following experiment be made. Take a lens the reverse of a
burning-glass, and place it between the hand and the solar rays, and
observe whether it diminish the heat of the sun as a burning-glass
increases it. For it is clear, with regard to the visual rays, that in
proportion as the lens is made of unequal thickness in the middle and
at its sides, the images appear either more diffused or contracted. It
should be seen, therefore, if the same be true with regard to heat.
Let the experiment be well tried, whether the lunar rays can be
received and collected by the strongest and best burning-glasses, so as
to produce even the least degree of heat. [86] But if that degree be,
perhaps, so subtile and weak, as not to be perceived or ascertained
by the touch, we must have recourse to those glasses which indicate
the warm or cold state of the atmosphere, and let the lunar rays fall
through the burning-glass on the top of this thermometer, and then
notice if the water be depressed by the heat. [87]
Let the burning-glass be tried on warm objects which emit no luminous
rays, as heated but not ignited iron or stone, or hot water, or the
like; and observe whether the heat become increased and condensed, as
happens with the solar rays.
Let it be tried on common flame.
The effect of comets (if we can reckon them among meteors[88]) in
augmenting the heat of the season is not found to be constant or
clear, although droughts have generally been observed to follow them.
However, luminous lines, and pillars, and openings, and the like,
appear more often in winter than in summer, and especially with the
most intense cold but joined with drought. Lightning, and coruscations,
and thunder, however, rarely happen in winter; and generally at the
time of the greatest heats. The appearances we term falling stars are
generally supposed to consist of some shining and inflamed viscous
substance, rather than of violently hot matter; but let this be further
investigated.
Some coruscations emit light without burning, but are never accompanied
by thunder.
Eructations and eruptions of flame are to be found in cold climates
as well as in hot, as in Iceland and Greenland; just as the trees of
cold countries are sometimes inflammable and more pitchy and resinous
than in warm, as the fir, pine, and the like. But the position and
nature of the soil, where such eruptions are wont to happen, is not yet
sufficiently investigated to enable us to subjoin a negative instance
to the affirmative.
All flame is constantly more or less warm, and this instance is not
altogether negative; yet it is said that the ignis fatuus (as it is
called), and which sometimes is driven against walls, has but little
heat; perhaps it resembles that of spirits of wine, which is mild and
gentle. That flame, however, appears yet milder, which in some well
authenticated and serious histories is said to have appeared round the
head and hair of boys and virgins, and instead of burning their hair,
merely to have played about it. And it is most certain that a sort of
flash, without any evident heat, has sometimes been seen about a horse
when sweating at night, or in damp weather. It is also a well known
fact,[89] and it was almost considered as a miracle, that a few years
since a girl’s apron sparkled when a little shaken or rubbed, which
was, perhaps, occasioned by the alum or salts with which the apron
was imbued, and which, after having been stuck together and incrusted
rather strongly, were broken by the friction. It is well known that
all sugar, whether candied or plain, if it be hard, will sparkle when
broken or scraped in the dark. In like manner sea and salt water is
sometimes found to shine at night when struck violently by the oar. The
foam of the sea when agitated by tempests also sparkles at night, and
the Spaniards call this appearance the sea’s lungs. It has not been
sufficiently ascertained what degree of heat attends the flame which
the ancient sailors called Castor and Pollux, and the moderns call
St. Ermus’ fire.
Every ignited body that is red-hot is always warm, although without
flame, nor is any negative instance subjoined to this affirmative.
Rotten wood, however, approaches nearly to it, for it shines at night,
and yet is not found to be warm; and the putrefying scales of fish
which shine in the same manner are not warm to the touch, nor the body
of the glowworm, or of the fly called Lucciola. [90]
The situation and nature of the soil of natural warm baths has not been
sufficiently investigated, and therefore a negative instance is not
subjoined.
To the instances of warm liquids we may subjoin the negative one of the
peculiar nature of liquids in general; for no tangible liquid is known
that is at once warm in its nature and constantly continues warm; but
their heat is only superinduced as an adventitious nature for a limited
time, so that those which are extremely warm in their power and effect,
as spirits of wine, chemical aromatic oils, the oils of vitriol and
sulphur, and the like, and which speedily burn, are yet cold at first
to the touch, and the water of natural baths, poured into any vessel
and separated from its source, cools down like water heated by the
fire. It is, however, true that oily substances are rather less cold
to the touch than those that are aqueous, oil for instance than water,
silk than linen; but this belongs to the table of degrees of cold.
In like manner we may subjoin a negative instance to that of warm
vapor, derived from the nature of vapor itself, as far as we are
acquainted with it. For exhalations from oily substances, though easily
inflammable, are yet never warm unless recently exhaled from some warm
substance.
The same may be said of the instance of air; for we never perceive that
air is warm unless confined or pressed, or manifestly heated by the
sun, by fire, or some other warm body.
A negative instance is exhibited in weather by its coldness with an
east or north wind, beyond what the season would lead us to expect,
just as the contrary takes place with the south or west winds. An
inclination to rain (especially in winter) attends warm weather, and to
frost cold weather.
A negative instance as to air confined in caverns may be observed in
summer. Indeed, we should make a more diligent inquiry into the nature
of confined air. For in the first place the qualities of air in its own
nature with regard to heat and cold may reasonably be the subject of
doubt; for air evidently derives its heat from the effects of celestial
bodies, and possibly its cold from the exhalation of the earth, and
in the mid region of air (as it is termed) from cold vapors and snow,
so that no judgment can be formed of the nature of air by that which
is out of doors and exposed, but a more correct one might be derived
from confined air. It is necessary, however, that the air should be
inclosed in a vessel of such materials as would not imbue it with heat
or cold of themselves, nor easily admit the influence of the external
atmosphere. The experiment should be made, therefore, with an earthen
jar, covered with folds of leather to protect it from the external
air, and the air should be kept three or four days in this vessel well
closed. On opening the jar, the degree of heat may be ascertained
either by the hand or a graduated glass tube.
There is a similar doubt as to whether the warmth of wool, skins,
feathers, and the like, is derived from a slight inherent heat, since
they are animal excretions, or from their being of a certain fat and
oily nature that accords with heat, or merely from the confinement and
separation of air which we spoke of in the preceding paragraph;[91] for
all air appears to possess a certain degree of warmth when separated
from the external atmosphere. Let an experiment be made, therefore,
with fibrous substances of linen, and not of wool, feathers, or silk,
which are animal excretions. For it is to be observed that all powders
(where air is manifestly inclosed) are less cold than the substances
when whole, just as we imagine froth (which contains air) to be less
cold than the liquid itself.
We have here no exactly negative instance, for we are not acquainted
with any body tangible or spirituous which does not admit of heat when
exposed to the fire. There is, however, this difference, that some
admit it more rapidly, as air, oil, and water, others more slowly, as
stone and metals. [92] This, however, belongs to the table of degrees.
No negative is here subjoined, except the remark that sparks are not
kindled by flint and steel, or any other hard substance, unless some
small particles of the stone or metal are struck off, and that the air
never forms them by friction, as is commonly supposed; besides, the
sparks from the weight of the ignited substance have a tendency to
descend rather than to rise, and when extinguished become a sort of
dark ash.
We are of opinion that here again there is no negative; for we are not
acquainted with any tangible body which does not become decidedly warm
by friction, so that the ancients feigned that the gods had no other
means or power of creating heat than the friction of air, by rapid
and violent rotation. On this point, however, further inquiry must be
made, whether bodies projected by machines (as balls from cannon) do
not derive some degree of heat from meeting the air, which renders
them somewhat warm when they fall. The air in motion rather cools
than heats, as in the winds, the bellows, or breath when the mouth is
contracted. The motion, however, in such instances is not sufficiently
rapid to excite heat, and is applied to a body of air, and not to its
component parts, so that it is not surprising that heat should not be
generated.
We must make a more diligent inquiry into this instance; for herbs and
green and moist vegetables appear to possess a latent heat, so small,
however, as not to be perceived by the touch in single specimens, but
when they are united and confined, so that their spirit cannot exhale
into the air, and they rather warm each other, their heat is at once
manifested, and even flame occasionally in suitable substances.
Here, too, we must make a more diligent inquiry; for quicklime, when
sprinkled with water, appears to conceive heat, either from its being
collected into one point (as we observed of herbs when confined), or
from the irritation and exasperation of the fiery spirit by water,
which occasions a conflict and struggle. The true reason will more
readily be shown if oil be used instead of water, for oil will
equally tend to collect the confined spirit, but not to irritate.
The experiment may be made more general, both by using the ashes and
calcined products of different bodies and by pouring different liquids
upon them.
A negative instance may be subjoined of other metals which are more
soft and soluble; for leaf gold dissolved by aqua regia, or lead by
aqua fortis, are not warm to the touch while dissolving, no more is
quicksilver (as far as I remember), but silver excites a slight heat,
and so does copper, and tin yet more plainly, and most of all iron and
steel, which excite not only a powerful heat, but a violent bubbling.
The heat, therefore, appears to be occasioned by the struggle which
takes place when these strong dissolvents penetrate, dig into, and tear
asunder the parts of those substances, while the substances themselves
resist. When, however, the substances yield more easily, scarcely any
heat is excited.
There is no negative instance with regard to the heat of animals,
except in insects (as has been observed), owing to their small size;
for in fishes, as compared with land animals, a lower degree rather
than a deprivation of heat is observable. In plants and vegetables,
both as to their exudations and pith when freshly exposed, there is no
sensible degree of heat. But in animals there is a great difference
in the degree, both in particular parts (for the heat varies near the
heart, the brain, and the extremities) and in the circumstances in
which they are placed, such as violent exercise and fevers.
Here, again, there is scarcely a negative instance. I might add that
the excrements of animals, even when they are no longer fresh, possess
evidently some effective heat, as is shown by their enriching the soil.
Such liquids (whether oily or watery) as are intensely acrid exhibit
the effects of heat, by the separation and burning of bodies after
some little action upon them, yet they are not at first warm to the
touch, but they act according to their affinity and the pores of the
substances to which they are applied; for aqua regia dissolves gold but
not silver--on the contrary, aqua fortis dissolves silver but not gold;
neither of them dissolves glass, and so of the rest.
Let spirits of wine be tried on wood, or butter, wax, or pitch, to see
if this will melt them at all by their heat; for the twenty-fourth
instance shows that they possess properties resembling those of heat in
causing incrustation. Let an experiment also be made with a graduated
glass or calendar,[93] concave at the top, by pouring well-rectified
spirits of wine into the cavity, and covering it up in order that they
may the better retain their heat, then observe whether their heat make
the water descend.
Spices and acrid herbs are sensibly warm to the palate, and still
more so when taken internally; one should see, therefore, on what
other substances they exhibit the effects of heat. Now, sailors tell
us that when large quantities of spices are suddenly opened, after
having been shut up for some time, there is some danger of fever and
inflammation to those who stir them or take them out. An experiment
might, therefore, be made whether such spices and herbs, when produced,
will, like smoke, dry fish and meat hung up over them.
There is an acrid effect and a degree of penetration in cold liquids,
such as vinegar and oil of vitriol, as well as in warm, such as oil of
marjoram and the like; they have, therefore, an equal effect in causing
animated substances to smart, and separating and consuming inanimate
parts. There is not any negative instance as to this, nor does there
exist any animal pain unaccompanied by the sensation of heat.
There are many effects common to cold and heat, however different
in their process; for snowballs appear to burn boys’ hands after
a little time, and cold no less than fire preserves bodies from
putrefaction--besides both heat and cold contract bodies. But it is
better to refer these instances and the like to the investigation of
cold.
XIII. In the third place we must exhibit to the understanding the
instances in which that nature, which is the object of our inquiries,
is present in a greater or less degree, either by comparing its
increase and decrease in the same object, or its degree in different
objects; for since the form of a thing is its very essence, and the
thing only differs from its form as the apparent from the actual
object, or the exterior from the interior, or that which is considered
with relation to man from that which is considered with relation to the
universe; it necessarily follows that no nature can be considered a
real form which does not uniformly diminish and increase with the given
nature. We are wont to call this our Table of Degrees, or Comparative
Instances.
_Table of the Degrees or Comparative Instances of Heat_
We will first speak of those bodies which exhibit no degree of heat
sensible to the touch, but appear rather to possess a potential heat,
or disposition and preparation for it. We will then go on to others,
which are actually warm to the touch, and observe the strength and
degree of it.
1. There is no known solid or tangible body which is by its own nature
originally warm; for neither stone, metal, sulphur, fossils, wood,
water, nor dead animal carcasses are found warm. The warm springs in
baths appear to be heated accidentally, by flame, subterraneous fire
(such as is thrown up by Etna and many other mountains), or by the
contact of certain bodies, as heat is exhibited in the dissolution of
iron and tin. The degree of heat, therefore, in inanimate objects is
not sensible to our touch; but they differ in their degrees of cold,
for wood and metal are not equally cold. [94] This, however, belongs to
the Table of Degrees of Cold.
2. But with regard to potential heat and predisposition to flame, we
find many inanimate substances wonderfully adapted to it, as sulphur,
naphtha, and saltpetre.
3. Bodies which have previously acquired heat, as horse dung from the
animal, or lime, and perhaps ashes and soot from fire, retain some
latent portion of it. Hence distillations and separations of substances
are effected by burying them in horse dung, and heat is excited in
lime by sprinkling it with water (as has been before observed).
[36] Gorgias of Leontium went to Athens in 424 B. C. He and Polus were
disciples of Empedocles, whom we have already noticed (Aphorism 63),
where he sustained the three famous propositions, that nothing exists,
that nothing can be known, and that it is out of the power of man
to transmit or communicate intelligence. He is reckoned one of the
earliest writers on the art of rhetoric, and for that reason, Plato
called his elegant dialogue on that subject after his name.
[37] Chrysippus, a stoic philosopher of Soli in Cilicia, Campestris,
born in 280, died in the 143d Olympiad, 208 B. C. He was equally
distinguished for natural abilities and industry, seldom suffering
a day to elapse without writing 500 lines. He wrote several hundred
volumes, of which three hundred were on logical subjects; but in all,
borrowed largely from others. He was very fond of the _sorites_ in
argument, which is hence called by Persius the heap of Chrysippus.
He was called the Column of the Portico, a name given to the Stoical
School from Zeno, its founder, who had given his lessons under the
portico.
Carneades, born about 215, died in 130. He attached himself to
Chrysippus, and sustained with _éclat_ the scepticism of the academy.
The Athenians sent him with Critolaus and Diogenes as ambassador
to Rome, where he attracted the attention of his new auditory by
the subtilty of his reasoning, and the fluency and vehemence of his
language. Before Galba and Cato the Censor, he harangued with great
variety of thought and copiousness of diction in praise of justice.
The next day, to establish his doctrine of the uncertainty of human
knowledge, he undertook to refute all his arguments. He maintained
with the New Academy, that the senses, the imagination, and the
understanding frequently deceive us, and therefore cannot be infallible
judges of truth, but that from the impressions produced on the mind by
means of the senses, we infer appearances of truth or probabilities.
Nevertheless, with respect to the conduct of life, Carneades held that
probable opinions are a sufficient guide.
Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, of Colophon, born in 556, the founder
of the Eleatic school, which owes its fame principally to Parmenides.
Wild in his opinions about astronomy, he supposed that the stars were
extinguished every morning, and rekindled at night; that eclipses were
occasioned by the temporary extinction of the sun, and that there were
several suns for the convenience of the different climates of the
earth. Yet this man held the chair of philosophy at Athens for seventy
years.
Philolaus, a Pythagorean philosopher of Crotona, B. C. 374. He first
supported the diurnal motion of the earth round its axis, and its
annual motion round the sun. Cicero (Acad. iv. 39) has ascribed this
opinion to the Syracusan philosopher Nicetas, and likewise to Plato.
From this passage, it is most probable that Copernicus got the idea of
the system he afterward established. Bacon, in the Advancement of Human
Learning, charges Gilbert with restoring the doctrines of Philolaus,
because he ventured to support the Copernican theory. --_Ed. _
[38] Bacon is equally conspicuous for the use and abuse of analogical
illustrations. The levity, as Stuart Mill very properly observes, by
which substances float on a stream, and the levity which is synonymous
with worthlessness, have nothing beside the name in common; and to
show how little value there is in the figure, we need only change the
word into buoyancy, to turn the semblance of Bacon’s argument against
himself. --_Ed. _
[39] We have before observed, that the New Academy did not profess
skepticism, but the ἀκατάληψια, or incomprehensibility of the absolute
essences of things. Even modern physicists are not wanting, to assert
with this school that the utmost knowledge we can obtain is relative,
and necessarily short of absolute certainty. It is not without an
appearance of truth that these philosophers maintain that our ideas
and perceptions do not express the nature of the things which they
represent, but only the effects of the peculiar organs by which they
are conveyed to the understanding, so that were these organs changed,
we should have different conceptions of their nature. That constitution
of air which is dark to man is luminous to bats and owls.
[40] Owing to the universal prevalence of Aristotelism.
[41] It must be remembered, that when Bacon wrote, algebra was in its
infancy, and the doctrine of units and infinitesimals undiscovered.
[42] Because the vulgar make up the overwhelming majority in such
decisions, and generally allow their judgments to be swayed by passion
or prejudice.
[43] See end of Axiom lxi. The subject extends to Axiom xc.
[44] If we adopt the statement of Herodotus, who places the Homeric
era 400 years back from his time, Homer lived about 900 years before
Christ. On adding this number to the sixteen centuries of the Christian
era which had elapsed up to Bacon’s time, we get the twenty-five
centuries he mentions. The Homeric epoch is the furthest point in
antiquity from which Bacon could reckon with any degree of certainty.
Hesiod, if he were not contemporary, immediately preceded him.
The epoch of Greek philosophy may be included between Thales and
Plato, that is, from the 35th to the 88th Olympiad; that of the Roman,
between Terence and Pliny. The modern revolution, in which Bacon is
one of the central figures, took its rise from the time of Dante and
Petrarch, who lived at the commencement of the fourteenth century; and
to which, on account of the invention of printing, and the universal
spread of literature, which has rendered a second destruction of
learning impossible, it is difficult to foresee any other end than the
extinction of the race of man. --_Ed. _
[45] The allusion is evidently to Roger Bacon and Réné Descartes. --_Ed. _
[46] From the abuse of the scholastics, who mistook the _à priori_
method, the deductive syllogism, for the entire province of
logic. --_Ed. _
[47] See Aphorism xcv.
[48] The incongruity to which Bacon alludes appears to spring from
confounding two things, which are not only distinct, but affect human
knowledge in inverse proportion, viz. , the experience which terminates
with life, with that experience which one century transmits to
another. --_Ed. _
[49] The Chinese characters resemble, in many respects, the
hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, being adapted to represent ideas, not
sounds.
[50] See Axiom 75.
[51] The methods by which Newton carried the rule and compass to the
boundaries of creation is a sufficient comment on the sagacity of the
text. The same cause which globulizes a bubble, has rounded the earth,
and the same law which draws a stone to its surface, keeps the moon in
her orbit. It was by calculating and ascertaining these principles upon
substances entirely at his disposal that this great philosopher was
enabled to give us a key to unlock the mysteries of the universe. --_Ed. _
[52] See the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, where Socrates is represented as
chasing Jupiter out of the sky, by resolving thunderstorms into aërial
concussions and whirlwinds. --_Ed. _
[53] Robespierre was the latest victim of this bigotry. In his younger
days he attempted to introduce Franklin’s lightning conductor into
France, but was persecuted by those whose lives he sought to protect,
as one audaciously striving to avert the designs of Providence. --_Ed. _
[54] We can hardly agree with the text. The scholastics, in building
up a system of divinity, certainly had recourse to the deductive
syllogism, because the inductive was totally inapplicable, except as
a verificatory process. With regard to the technical form in which
they marshalled their arguments, which is what our author aims at in
his censure, they owed nothing at all to Aristotle, the conducting a
dispute in naked syllogistic fashion having originated entirely with
themselves. --_Ed. _
[55] Bacon cannot be supposed to allude to those divines who have
attempted to show that the progress of physical science is confirmatory
of revelation, but only to such as have built up a system of faith out
of their own refinements on nature and revelation, as Patricius and
Emanuel Swedenborg. --_Ed. _
[56] Daniel xii. 4.
[57] Bacon, in this Aphorism, appears to have entertained a fair
idea of the use of the inductive and deductive methods in scientific
inquiry, though his want of geometrical knowledge must have hindered
him from accurately determining the precise functions of each, as
it certainly led him in other parts of the Organon (V. Aph. 82), to
undervalue the deductive, and, as he calls it, the dogmatic method, and
to rely too much upon empiricism. --_Ed. _
[58] The reader may consult the note of the 23d Aphorism for the fault
which Bacon censures, and, if he wish to pursue the subject further,
may read Plato’s Timæus, where that philosopher explains his system
in detail. Bacon, however, is hardly consistent in one part of his
censure, for he also talks about the spirit and appetites of inanimate
substances, and that so frequently, as to preclude the supposition that
he is employing metaphor. --_Ed. _
[59] Proclus flourished about the beginning of the fifth century,
and was the successor of Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblicus, who, in
the two preceding centuries, had revived the doctrines of Plato, and
assailed the Christian religion. The allusion in the text must be
assigned to Iamblicus, who, in the fourth century, had republished
the Pythagorean theology of numbers, and endeavored to construct the
world out of arithmetic, thinking everything could be solved by the
aid of proportions and geometry. Bacon must not be understood in the
text to censure the use but the abuse of mathematics and physical
investigations, as in the “De Augmentis” (lib. iv. c. 6), he enumerates
the multiplicity of demonstration scientific facts admit of, from this
source. --_Ed. _
[60] See Livy, lib. ix. c. 17, where, in a digression on the probable
effect of a contest between Rome and Alexander the Great, he says: “Non
cum Dario rem esse dixisset: quem mulierum ac spadonum agmen trahentem
inter purpuram atque aurum, oneratum fortunæ apparatibus, prædam
veriùs quam hostem, nihil aliud quam ausus vana contemnere, incruentus
devicit. ”
[61] The lowest axioms are such as spring from simple experience--such
as in chemistry, that animal substances yield no fixed salt by
calcination; in music, that concords intermixed with discords make
harmony, etc. Intermediate axioms advance a step further, being the
result of reflection, which, applied to our experimental knowledge,
deduces laws from them, such as in optics of the first degree of
generality, that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of
reflection; and in mechanics, Kepler’s three laws of motion, while
his general law, that all bodies attract each other with forces
proportional to their masses, and inversely as the squares of their
distances, may be taken as one of the highest axioms. Yet so far is
this principle from being only notional or abstract, it has presented
us with a key which fits into the intricate wards of the heavens, and
has laid bare to our gaze the principal mechanism of the universe.
But natural philosophy in Bacon’s day had not advanced beyond
intermediate axioms, and the term notional or abstract is applied to
those general axioms then current, not founded on the solid principles
of inductive inquiry, but based upon _à priori_ reasoning and airy
metaphysics. --_Ed. _
[62] This hope has been abundantly realized in the discovery of gravity
and the decomposition of light, mainly by the inductive method. To a
better philosophy we may also attribute the discovery of electricity,
galvanism and their mutual connection with each other, and magnetism,
the inventions of the air-pump, steam-engine and the chronometer.
[63] As Bacon very frequently cites these authors, a slight notice
of their labors may not be unacceptable to the reader. Bernardinus
Telesius, born at Cosenza, in 1508, combated the Aristotelian system
in a work entitled “De Rerum Natura juxta propria principia,” _i. e. _,
according to principles of his own. The proem of the work announces his
design was to show that “the construction of the world, the magnitude
and nature of the bodies contained in it, are not to be investigated by
reasoning, which was done by the ancients, but are to be apprehended
by the senses, and collected from the things themselves. ” He had,
however, no sooner laid down this principle than he departed from it
in practice, and pursued the deductive method he so much condemned in
his predecessors. His first step was an assumption of principles as
arbitrary as any of the empirical notions of antiquity; at the outset
of his book he very quietly takes it for granted that heat is the
principle of motion, cold of immobility, matter being assumed as the
corporeal substratum, in which these incorporeal and active agents
carry on their operations. Out of these abstract and ill-defined
conceptions Telesius builds up a system quite as complete, symmetrical,
and imaginative as any of the structures of antiquity.
Francis Patricius, born at Cherso, in Dalmatia, about 1529, was another
physicist who rose up against Aristotle, and announced the dawn of a
new philosophy. In 1593 appeared his “Nova de Universis Philosophia. ”
He lays down a string of axioms, in which scholastic notions, physical
discoveries, and theological dogmas, are strangely commingled, and
erects upon them a system which represents all the grotesque features
of theological empiricism.
Severinus, born in Jutland, in 1529, published an attack on Aristotle’s
natural history, but adopted fantasies which the Stagyrite ridiculed
in his own day. He was a follower of Paracelsus, a Swiss enthusiast
of the fifteenth century, who ignored the ancient doctrine of the
four elements for salt, sulphur and mercury, and allied chemistry and
medicine with mysticism. --_Ed. _
[64] Bacon’s apology is sound, and completely answers those German
and French critics, who have refused him a niche in the philosophical
pantheon. One German commentator, too modest to reveal his name,
accuses Bacon of ignorance of the calculus, though, in his day, Wallis
had not yet stumbled upon the laws of continuous fractions; while
Count de Maistre, in a coarse attack upon his genius, expresses his
astonishment at finding Bacon unacquainted with discoveries which were
not heard of till a century after his death. --_Ed. _
[65] Philip of Macedon.
[66] See Plato’s Timæus.
[67] The saying of Philocrates when he differed from Demosthenes. --_Ed. _
[68] The old error of placing the deductive syllogism in antagonism to
the inductive, as if they were not both parts of one system or refused
to cohere together. So far from there being any radical opposition
between them, it would not be difficult to show that Bacon’s method
was syllogistic in his sense of the term. For the suppressed premise
of every Baconian enthymeme, viz. , the acknowledged uniformity of the
laws of nature as stated in the axiom, whatever has once occurred will
occur again, must be assumed as the basis of every conclusion which he
draws before we can admit its legitimacy. The opposition, therefore,
of Bacon’s method could not be directed against the old logic, for
it assumed and exemplified its principles, but rather to the abusive
application which the ancients made of this science, on turning its
powers to the development of abstract principles which they imagined
to be pregnant with the solution of the latent mysteries of the
universe. Bacon justly overthrew these ideal notions, and accepted of
no principle as a basis which was not guaranteed by actual experiment
and observation; and so far he laid the foundations of a sound
philosophy by turning the inductive logic to its proper account in the
interpretation of nature.
[69] This is the opening of the Sixth Book of Lucretius. Bacon probably
quoted from memory; the lines are--
“Primæ frugiferos fœtus mortalibus ægris
Dididerunt quondam præclaro nomine Athenæ
Et recreaverunt,” etc.
The teeming corn, that feeble mortals crave,
First, and long since, renowned Athens gave,
And cheered their life--then taught to frame their laws.
[70] Prov. xxv. 2.
APHORISMS--BOOK II
ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, OR THE REIGN OF MAN
I. To generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures, upon a
given body, is the labor and aim of human power: while to discover the
form or true difference of a given nature, or the nature[71] to which
such nature is owing, or source from which it emanates (for these terms
approach nearest to an explanation of our meaning), is the labor and
discovery of human knowledge; and subordinate to these primary labors
are two others of a secondary nature and inferior stamp. Under the
first must be ranked the transformation of concrete bodies from one to
another, which is possible within certain limits; under the second, the
discovery, in every species of generation and motion, of the latent
and uninterrupted process from the manifest efficient and manifest
subject matter up to the given form: and a like discovery of the latent
conformation of bodies which are at rest instead of being in motion.
II. The unhappy state of man’s actual knowledge is manifested even
by the common assertions of the vulgar. It is rightly laid down that
true knowledge is that which is deduced from causes. The division of
four causes also is not amiss: matter, form, the efficient, and end
or final cause. [72] Of these, however, the latter is so far from
being beneficial, that it even corrupts the sciences, except in the
intercourse of man with man. The discovery of form is considered
desperate. As for the efficient cause and matter (according to the
present system of inquiry and the received opinions concerning them,
by which they are placed remote from, and without any latent process
toward form), they are but desultory and superficial, and of scarcely
any avail to real and active knowledge. Nor are we unmindful of our
having pointed out and corrected above the error of the human mind, in
assigning the first qualities of essence to forms. [73] For although
nothing exists in nature except individual bodies,[74] exhibiting clear
individual effects according to particular laws, yet in each branch of
learning, that very law, its investigation, discovery, and development,
are the foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore,
and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term
form,[75] adopting that word because it has grown into common use, and
is of familiar occurrence.
III. He who has learned the cause of a particular nature (such as
whiteness or heat), in particular subjects only, has acquired but
an imperfect knowledge: as he who can induce a certain effect upon
particular substances only, among those which are susceptible of it,
has acquired but an imperfect power. But he who has only learned the
efficient and material cause (which causes are variable and mere
vehicles conveying form to particular substances) may perhaps arrive
at some new discoveries in matters of a similar nature, and prepared
for the purpose, but does not stir the limits of things which are much
more deeply rooted; while he who is acquainted with forms, comprehends
the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct from each
other. He can disclose and bring forward, therefore (though it has
never yet been done), things which neither the vicissitudes of nature,
nor the industry of experiment, nor chance itself, would ever have
brought about, and which would forever have escaped man’s thoughts;
from the discovery of forms, therefore, results genuine theory and free
practice.
IV. Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an
identity between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet,
on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling upon
abstractions, it is by far the safest method to commence and build
up the sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the
practical division, and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical.
We must consider, therefore, what precepts, or what direction or guide,
a person would most desire, in order to generate and superinduce any
nature upon a given body: and this not in abstruse, but in the plainest
language.
For instance, if a person should wish to superinduce the yellow color
of gold upon silver, or an additional weight (observing always the laws
of matter) or transparency on an opaque stone, or tenacity in glass,
or vegetation on a substance which is not vegetable, we must (I say)
consider what species of precept or guide this person would prefer.
And, first, he will doubtless be anxious to be shown some method that
will neither fail in effect, nor deceive him in the trial of it;
secondly, he will be anxious that the prescribed method should not
restrict him and tie him down to peculiar means, and certain particular
methods of acting; for he will, perhaps, be at loss, and without the
power or opportunity of collecting and procuring such means. Now if
there be other means and methods (besides those prescribed) of creating
such a nature, they will perhaps be of such a kind as are in his
power, yet by the confined limits of the precept he will be deprived
of reaping any advantage from them; thirdly, he will be anxious to be
shown something not so difficult as the required effect itself, but
approaching more nearly to practice.
We will lay this down, therefore, as the genuine and perfect rule of
practice, that it should be certain, free and preparatory, or having
relation to practice. And this is the same thing as the discovery of a
true form; for the form of any nature is such, that when it is assigned
the particular nature infallibly follows. It is, therefore, always
present when that nature is present, and universally attests such
presence, and is inherent in the whole of it. The same form is of such
a character, that if it be removed the particular nature infallibly
vanishes. It is, therefore, absent, whenever that nature is absent,
and perpetually testifies such absence, and exists in no other nature.
Lastly, the true form is such, that it deduces the particular nature
from some source of essence existing in many subjects, and more known
(as they term it) to nature, than the form itself. Such, then, is our
determination and rule with regard to a genuine and perfect theoretical
axiom, that a nature be found convertible with a given nature, and yet
such as to limit the more known nature, in the manner of a real genus.
But these two rules, the practical and theoretical, are in fact the
same, and that which is most useful in practice is most correct in
theory.
V. But the rule or axiom for the transformation of bodies is of two
kinds. The first regards the body as an aggregate or combination of
simple natures. Thus, in gold are united the following circumstances:
it is yellow, heavy, of a certain weight, malleable and ductile to a
certain extent; it is not volatile, loses part of its substance by
fire, melts in a particular manner, is separated and dissolved by
particular methods, and so of the other natures observable in gold.
An axiom, therefore, of this kind deduces the subject from the forms
of simple natures; for he who has acquired the forms and methods of
superinducing yellowness, weight, ductility, stability, deliquescence,
solution, and the like, and their degrees and modes, will consider and
contrive how to unite them in any body, so as to transform[76] it into
gold. And this method of operating belongs to primary action; for it is
the same thing to produce one or many simple natures, except that man
is more confined and restricted in his operations, if many be required,
on account of the difficulty of uniting many natures together. It must,
however, be observed, that this method of operating (which considers
natures as simple though in a concrete body) sets out from what is
constant, eternal, and universal in nature, and opens such broad paths
to human power, as the thoughts of man can in the present state of
things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself.
The second kind of axiom (which depends on the discovery of the latent
process) does not proceed by simple natures, but by concrete bodies,
as they are found in nature and in its usual course. For instance,
suppose the inquiry to be, from what beginnings, in what manner, and by
what process gold or any metal or stone is generated from the original
menstruum, or its elements, up to the perfect mineral: or, in like
manner, by what process plants are generated, from the first concretion
of juices in the earth, or from seeds, up to the perfect plant, with
the whole successive motion, and varied and uninterrupted efforts of
nature; and the same inquiry be made as to a regularly deduced system
of the generation of animals from coition to birth, and so on of other
bodies.
Nor is this species of inquiry confined to the mere generation of
bodies, but it is applicable to other changes and labors of nature.
For instance, where an inquiry is made into the whole series and
continued operation of the nutritive process, from the first reception
of the food to its complete assimilation to the recipient;[77] or
into the voluntary motion of animals, from the first impression of
the imagination, and the continuous effects of the spirits, up to the
bending and motion of the joints; or into the free motion of the tongue
and lips, and other accessories which give utterance to articulate
sounds. For all these investigations relate to concrete or associated
natures artificially brought together, and take into consideration
certain particular and special habits of nature, and not those
fundamental and general laws which constitute forms. It must, however,
be plainly owned, that this method appears more prompt and easy, and of
greater promise than the primary one.
In like manner the operative branch, which answers to this
contemplative branch, extends and advances its operation from that
which is usually observed in nature, to other subjects immediately
connected with it, or not very remote from such immediate connection.
But the higher and radical operations upon nature depend entirely
on the primary axioms. Besides, even where man has not the means
of acting, but only of acquiring knowledge, as in astronomy (for
man cannot act upon, change, or transform the heavenly bodies), the
investigation of facts or truth, as well as the knowledge of causes
and coincidences, must be referred to those primary and universal
axioms that regard simple natures; such as the nature of spontaneous
rotation, attraction, or the magnetic force, and many others which
are more common than the heavenly bodies themselves. For let no one
hope to determine the question whether the earth or heaven revolve in
the diurnal motion, unless he have first comprehended the nature of
spontaneous rotation.
VI. But the latent process of which we speak, is far from being obvious
to men’s minds, beset as they now are. For we mean not the measures,
symptoms, or degrees of any process which can be exhibited in the
bodies themselves, but simply a continued process, which, for the most
part, escapes the observation of the senses.
For instance, in all generations and transformations of bodies, we must
inquire, what is in the act of being lost and escaping, what remains,
what is being added, what is being diluted, what is being contracted,
what is being united, what is being separated, what is continuous, what
is broken off, what is urging forward, what impedes, what predominates,
what is subservient, and many other circumstances.
Nor are these inquiries again to be made in the mere generation
and transformation of bodies only, but in all other alterations and
fluctuations we must in like manner inquire; what precedes, what
succeeds, what is quick, what is slow, what produces and what governs
motion, and the like. All which matters are unknown and unattempted by
the sciences, in their present heavy and inactive state. For, since
every natural act is brought about by the smallest efforts,[78] or at
least such as are too small to strike our senses, let no one hope that
he will be able to direct or change nature unless he have properly
comprehended and observed these efforts.
VII. In like manner, the investigation and discovery of the latent
conformation in bodies is no less new, than the discovery of the
latent process and form. For we as yet are doubtless only admitted to
the antechamber of nature, and do not prepare an entrance into her
presence-room. But nobody can endue a given body with a new nature, or
transform it successfully and appropriately into a new body, without
possessing a complete knowledge of the body so to be changed or
transformed. For he will run into vain, or, at least, into difficult
and perverse methods, ill adapted to the nature of the body upon which
he operates. A clear path, therefore, toward this object also must be
thrown open, and well supported.
Labor is well and usefully bestowed upon the anatomy of organized
bodies, such as those of men and animals, which appears to be a subtile
matter, and a useful examination of nature. The species of anatomy,
however, is that of first sight, open to the senses, and takes place
only in organized bodies. It is obvious, and of ready access, when
compared with the real anatomy of latent conformation in bodies which
are considered similar, particularly in specific objects and their
parts; as those of iron, stone, and the similar parts of plants and
animals, as the root, the leaf, the flower, the flesh, the blood,
and bones, etc. Yet human industry has not completely neglected this
species of anatomy; for we have an instance of it in the separation of
similar bodies by distillation, and other solutions, which shows the
dissimilarity of the compound by the union of the homogeneous parts.
These methods are useful, and of importance to our inquiry, although
attended generally with fallacy: for many natures are assigned and
attributed to the separate bodies, as if they had previously existed in
the compound, which, in reality, are recently bestowed and superinduced
by fire and heat, and the other modes of separation. Besides, it is,
after all, but a small part of the labor of discovering the real
conformation in the compound, which is so subtile and nice, that it is
rather confused and lost by the operation of the fire, than discovered
and brought to light.
A separation and solution of bodies, therefore, is to be effected, not
by fire indeed, but rather by reasoning and true induction, with the
assistance of experiment, and by a comparison with other bodies, and a
reduction to those simple natures and their forms which meet, and are
combined in the compound; and we must assuredly pass from Vulcan to
Minerva, if we wish to bring to light the real texture and conformation
of bodies, upon which every occult and (as it is sometimes called)
specific property and virtue of things depends, and whence also every
rule of powerful change and transformation is deduced.
For instance, we must examine what spirit is in every body,[79]
what tangible essence; whether that spirit is copious and exuberant,
or meagre and scarce, fine or coarse, aëriform or igniform, active
or sluggish, weak or robust, progressive or retrograde, abrupt or
continuous, agreeing with external and surrounding objects, or
differing from them, etc. In like manner must we treat tangible essence
(which admits of as many distinctions as the spirit), and its hairs,
fibres, and varied texture. Again, the situation of the spirit in
the corporeal mass, its pores, passages, veins, and cells, and the
rudiments or first essays of the organic body, are subject to the
same examination. In these, however, as in our former inquiries, and
therefore in the whole investigation of latent conformation, the only
genuine and clear light which completely dispels all darkness and
subtile difficulties, is admitted by means of the primary axioms.
VIII. This method will not bring us to atoms,[80] which takes for
granted the vacuum, and immutability of matter (neither of which
hypotheses is correct), but to the real particles such as we discover
them to be. Nor is there any ground for alarm at this refinement
as if it were inexplicable, for, on the contrary, the more inquiry
is directed to simple natures, the more will everything be placed
in a plain and perspicuous light, since we transfer our attention
from the complicated to the simple, from the incommensurable to
the commensurable, from surds to rational quantities, from the
indefinite and vague to the definite and certain; as when we arrive
at the elements of letters, and the simple tones of concords. The
investigation of nature is best conducted when mathematics are applied
to physics. Again, let none be alarmed at vast numbers and fractions,
for in calculation it is as easy to set down or to reflect upon a
thousand as a unit, or the thousandth part of an integer as an integer
itself.
IX. [81] From the two kinds of axioms above specified, arise the two
divisions of philosophy and the sciences, and we will use the commonly
adopted terms which approach the nearest to our meaning, in our own
sense. Let the investigation of forms, which (in reasoning at least,
and after their own laws), are eternal and immutable, constitute
metaphysics,[82] and let the investigation of the efficient cause of
matter, latent process, and latent conformation (which all relate
merely to the ordinary course of nature, and not to her fundamental and
eternal laws), constitute physics. Parallel to these, let there be two
practical divisions; to physics that of mechanics, and to metaphysics
that of magic, in the purest sense of the term, as applied to its ample
means, and its command over nature.
X. The object of our philosophy being thus laid down, we proceed to
precepts, in the most clear and regular order. The signs for the
interpretation of nature comprehend two divisions; the first regards
the eliciting or creating of axioms from experiment, the second the
deducing or deriving of new experiments from axioms. The first admits
of three subdivisions into ministrations. 1. To the senses. 2. To the
memory. 3. To the mind or reason.
For we must first prepare as a foundation for the whole, a complete
and accurate natural and experimental history. We must not imagine or
invent, but discover the acts and properties of nature.
But natural and experimental history is so varied and diffuse, that
it confounds and distracts the understanding unless it be fixed
and exhibited in due order. We must, therefore, form tables and
co-ordinations of instances, upon such a plan, and in such order that
the understanding may be enabled to act upon them.
Even when this is done, the understanding, left to itself and to its
own operation, is incompetent and unfit to construct its axioms without
direction and support. Our third ministration, therefore, must be true
and legitimate induction, the very key of interpretation. We must
begin, however, at the end, and go back again to the others.
XI. The investigation of forms proceeds thus: a nature being given, we
must first present to the understanding all the known instances which
agree in the same nature, although the subject matter be considerably
diversified. And this collection must be made as a mere history, and
without any premature reflection, or too great degree of refinement.
For instance; take the investigation of the form of heat.
_Instances agreeing in the Form of Heat_
1. The rays of the sun, particularly in summer, and at noon.
2. The same reflected and condensed, as between mountains, or along
walls, and particularly in burning mirrors.
3. Ignited meteors.
4. Burning lightning.
5. Eruptions of flames from the cavities of mountains, etc.
6. Flame of every kind.
7. Ignited solids.
8. Natural warm baths.
9. Warm or heated liquids.
10. Warm vapors and smoke; and the air itself, which admits a most
powerful and violent heat if confined, as in reverberating furnaces.
11. Damp hot weather, arising from the constitution of the air, without
any reference to the time of the year.
12. Confined and subterraneous air in some caverns, particularly in
winter.
13. All shaggy substances, as wool, the skins of animals, and the
plumage of birds, contain some heat.
14. All bodies, both solid and liquid, dense and rare (as the air
itself), placed near fire for any time.
15. Sparks arising from the violent percussion of flint and steel.
16. All bodies rubbed violently, as stone, wood, cloth, etc. , so that
rudders, and axles of wheels, sometimes catch fire, and the West
Indians obtain fire by attrition.
17. Green and moist vegetable matter confined and rubbed together,
as roses, peas in baskets; so hay, if it be damp when stacked, often
catches fire.
18. Quicklime sprinkled with water.
19. Iron, when first dissolved by acids in a glass, and without any
application to fire; the same of tin, but not so intensely.
20. Animals, particularly internally; although the heat is not
perceivable by the touch in insects, on account of their small size.
21. Horse dung, and the like excrement from other animals, when fresh.
22. Strong oil of sulphur and of vitriol exhibit the operation of heat
in burning linen.
23. As does the oil of marjoram, and like substances, in burning the
bony substance of the teeth.
24. Strong and well rectified spirits of wine exhibit the same effects;
so that white of eggs when thrown into it grows hard and white, almost
in the same manner as when boiled, and bread becomes burned and brown
as if toasted.
25. Aromatic substances and warm plants, as the dracunculus [arum], old
nasturtium, etc. , which, though they be not warm to the touch (whether
whole or pulverized), yet are discovered by the tongue and palate to be
warm and almost burning when slightly masticated.
26. Strong vinegar and all acids, on any part of the body not clothed
with the epidermis, as the eye, tongue, or any wounded part, or where
the skin is removed, excite a pain differing but little from that
produced by heat.
27. Even a severe and intense cold produces a sensation of burning. [83]
“Nec Boreæ penetrabile frigus adurit. ”
28. Other instances.
We are wont to call this a table of existence and presence.
XII. We must next present to the understanding instances which do not
admit of the given nature, for form (as we have observed) ought no less
to be absent where the given nature is absent, than to be present where
it is present. If, however, we were to examine every instance, our
labor would be infinite.
Negatives, therefore, must be classed under the affirmatives, and the
want of the given nature must be inquired into more particularly in
objects which have a very close connection with those others in which
it is present and manifest. And this we are wont to term a table of
deviation or of absence in proximity.
_Proximate Instances wanting the Nature of Heat_
The rays of the moon, stars, and comets, are not found to be warm to
the touch, nay, the severest cold has been observed to take place
at the full of the moon. Yet the larger fixed stars are supposed to
increase and render more intense the heat of the sun, as he approaches
them, when the sun is in the sign of the Lion, for instance, and in the
dog-days. [84]
The rays of the sun in what is called the middle region of the air
give no heat, to account for which the commonly assigned reason is
satisfactory; namely, that that region is neither sufficiently near to
the body of the sun whence the rays emanate, nor to the earth whence
they are reflected. And the fact is manifested by snow being perpetual
on the tops of mountains, unless extremely lofty. But it is observed,
on the other hand, by some, that at the Peak of Teneriffe, and also
among the Andes of Peru, the tops of the mountains are free from snow,
which only lies in the lower part as you ascend. Besides, the air on
the summit of these mountains is found to be by no means cold, but only
thin and sharp; so much so, that in the Andes it pricks and hurts the
eyes from its extreme sharpness, and even excites the orifice of the
stomach and produces vomiting. The ancients also observed, that the
rarity of the air on the summit of Olympus was such, that those who
ascended it were obliged to carry sponges moistened with vinegar and
water, and to apply them now and then to their nostrils, as the air was
not dense enough for their respiration; on the summit of which mountain
it is also related, there reigned so great a serenity and calm, free
from rain, snow, or wind, that the letters traced upon the ashes of the
sacrifices on the altar of Jupiter, by the fingers of those who had
offered them, would remain undisturbed till the next year. Those even,
who at this day go to the top of the Peak of Teneriffe, walk by night
and not in the daytime, and are advised and pressed by their guides, as
soon as the sun rises, to make haste in their descent, on account of
the danger (apparently arising from the rarity of the atmosphere), lest
their breathing should be relaxed and suffocated. [85]
The reflection of the solar rays in the polar regions is found to
be weak and inefficient in producing heat, so that the Dutch, who
wintered in Nova Zembla, and expected that their vessel would be
freed about the beginning of July from the obstruction of the mass of
ice which had blocked it up, were disappointed and obliged to embark
in their boat. Hence the direct rays of the sun appear to have but
little power even on the plain, and when reflected, unless they are
multiplied and condensed, which takes place when the sun tends more
to the perpendicular; for, then, the incidence of the rays occurs at
more acute angles, so that the reflected rays are nearer to each other,
while, on the contrary, when the sun is in a very oblique position,
the angles of incidence are very obtuse, and the reflected rays at a
greater distance. In the meantime it must be observed, that there may
be many operations of the solar rays, relating, too, to the nature of
heat, which are not proportioned to our touch, so that, with regard to
us, they do not tend to produce warmth, but, with regard to some other
bodies, have their due effect in producing it.
Let the following experiment be made. Take a lens the reverse of a
burning-glass, and place it between the hand and the solar rays, and
observe whether it diminish the heat of the sun as a burning-glass
increases it. For it is clear, with regard to the visual rays, that in
proportion as the lens is made of unequal thickness in the middle and
at its sides, the images appear either more diffused or contracted. It
should be seen, therefore, if the same be true with regard to heat.
Let the experiment be well tried, whether the lunar rays can be
received and collected by the strongest and best burning-glasses, so as
to produce even the least degree of heat. [86] But if that degree be,
perhaps, so subtile and weak, as not to be perceived or ascertained
by the touch, we must have recourse to those glasses which indicate
the warm or cold state of the atmosphere, and let the lunar rays fall
through the burning-glass on the top of this thermometer, and then
notice if the water be depressed by the heat. [87]
Let the burning-glass be tried on warm objects which emit no luminous
rays, as heated but not ignited iron or stone, or hot water, or the
like; and observe whether the heat become increased and condensed, as
happens with the solar rays.
Let it be tried on common flame.
The effect of comets (if we can reckon them among meteors[88]) in
augmenting the heat of the season is not found to be constant or
clear, although droughts have generally been observed to follow them.
However, luminous lines, and pillars, and openings, and the like,
appear more often in winter than in summer, and especially with the
most intense cold but joined with drought. Lightning, and coruscations,
and thunder, however, rarely happen in winter; and generally at the
time of the greatest heats. The appearances we term falling stars are
generally supposed to consist of some shining and inflamed viscous
substance, rather than of violently hot matter; but let this be further
investigated.
Some coruscations emit light without burning, but are never accompanied
by thunder.
Eructations and eruptions of flame are to be found in cold climates
as well as in hot, as in Iceland and Greenland; just as the trees of
cold countries are sometimes inflammable and more pitchy and resinous
than in warm, as the fir, pine, and the like. But the position and
nature of the soil, where such eruptions are wont to happen, is not yet
sufficiently investigated to enable us to subjoin a negative instance
to the affirmative.
All flame is constantly more or less warm, and this instance is not
altogether negative; yet it is said that the ignis fatuus (as it is
called), and which sometimes is driven against walls, has but little
heat; perhaps it resembles that of spirits of wine, which is mild and
gentle. That flame, however, appears yet milder, which in some well
authenticated and serious histories is said to have appeared round the
head and hair of boys and virgins, and instead of burning their hair,
merely to have played about it. And it is most certain that a sort of
flash, without any evident heat, has sometimes been seen about a horse
when sweating at night, or in damp weather. It is also a well known
fact,[89] and it was almost considered as a miracle, that a few years
since a girl’s apron sparkled when a little shaken or rubbed, which
was, perhaps, occasioned by the alum or salts with which the apron
was imbued, and which, after having been stuck together and incrusted
rather strongly, were broken by the friction. It is well known that
all sugar, whether candied or plain, if it be hard, will sparkle when
broken or scraped in the dark. In like manner sea and salt water is
sometimes found to shine at night when struck violently by the oar. The
foam of the sea when agitated by tempests also sparkles at night, and
the Spaniards call this appearance the sea’s lungs. It has not been
sufficiently ascertained what degree of heat attends the flame which
the ancient sailors called Castor and Pollux, and the moderns call
St. Ermus’ fire.
Every ignited body that is red-hot is always warm, although without
flame, nor is any negative instance subjoined to this affirmative.
Rotten wood, however, approaches nearly to it, for it shines at night,
and yet is not found to be warm; and the putrefying scales of fish
which shine in the same manner are not warm to the touch, nor the body
of the glowworm, or of the fly called Lucciola. [90]
The situation and nature of the soil of natural warm baths has not been
sufficiently investigated, and therefore a negative instance is not
subjoined.
To the instances of warm liquids we may subjoin the negative one of the
peculiar nature of liquids in general; for no tangible liquid is known
that is at once warm in its nature and constantly continues warm; but
their heat is only superinduced as an adventitious nature for a limited
time, so that those which are extremely warm in their power and effect,
as spirits of wine, chemical aromatic oils, the oils of vitriol and
sulphur, and the like, and which speedily burn, are yet cold at first
to the touch, and the water of natural baths, poured into any vessel
and separated from its source, cools down like water heated by the
fire. It is, however, true that oily substances are rather less cold
to the touch than those that are aqueous, oil for instance than water,
silk than linen; but this belongs to the table of degrees of cold.
In like manner we may subjoin a negative instance to that of warm
vapor, derived from the nature of vapor itself, as far as we are
acquainted with it. For exhalations from oily substances, though easily
inflammable, are yet never warm unless recently exhaled from some warm
substance.
The same may be said of the instance of air; for we never perceive that
air is warm unless confined or pressed, or manifestly heated by the
sun, by fire, or some other warm body.
A negative instance is exhibited in weather by its coldness with an
east or north wind, beyond what the season would lead us to expect,
just as the contrary takes place with the south or west winds. An
inclination to rain (especially in winter) attends warm weather, and to
frost cold weather.
A negative instance as to air confined in caverns may be observed in
summer. Indeed, we should make a more diligent inquiry into the nature
of confined air. For in the first place the qualities of air in its own
nature with regard to heat and cold may reasonably be the subject of
doubt; for air evidently derives its heat from the effects of celestial
bodies, and possibly its cold from the exhalation of the earth, and
in the mid region of air (as it is termed) from cold vapors and snow,
so that no judgment can be formed of the nature of air by that which
is out of doors and exposed, but a more correct one might be derived
from confined air. It is necessary, however, that the air should be
inclosed in a vessel of such materials as would not imbue it with heat
or cold of themselves, nor easily admit the influence of the external
atmosphere. The experiment should be made, therefore, with an earthen
jar, covered with folds of leather to protect it from the external
air, and the air should be kept three or four days in this vessel well
closed. On opening the jar, the degree of heat may be ascertained
either by the hand or a graduated glass tube.
There is a similar doubt as to whether the warmth of wool, skins,
feathers, and the like, is derived from a slight inherent heat, since
they are animal excretions, or from their being of a certain fat and
oily nature that accords with heat, or merely from the confinement and
separation of air which we spoke of in the preceding paragraph;[91] for
all air appears to possess a certain degree of warmth when separated
from the external atmosphere. Let an experiment be made, therefore,
with fibrous substances of linen, and not of wool, feathers, or silk,
which are animal excretions. For it is to be observed that all powders
(where air is manifestly inclosed) are less cold than the substances
when whole, just as we imagine froth (which contains air) to be less
cold than the liquid itself.
We have here no exactly negative instance, for we are not acquainted
with any body tangible or spirituous which does not admit of heat when
exposed to the fire. There is, however, this difference, that some
admit it more rapidly, as air, oil, and water, others more slowly, as
stone and metals. [92] This, however, belongs to the table of degrees.
No negative is here subjoined, except the remark that sparks are not
kindled by flint and steel, or any other hard substance, unless some
small particles of the stone or metal are struck off, and that the air
never forms them by friction, as is commonly supposed; besides, the
sparks from the weight of the ignited substance have a tendency to
descend rather than to rise, and when extinguished become a sort of
dark ash.
We are of opinion that here again there is no negative; for we are not
acquainted with any tangible body which does not become decidedly warm
by friction, so that the ancients feigned that the gods had no other
means or power of creating heat than the friction of air, by rapid
and violent rotation. On this point, however, further inquiry must be
made, whether bodies projected by machines (as balls from cannon) do
not derive some degree of heat from meeting the air, which renders
them somewhat warm when they fall. The air in motion rather cools
than heats, as in the winds, the bellows, or breath when the mouth is
contracted. The motion, however, in such instances is not sufficiently
rapid to excite heat, and is applied to a body of air, and not to its
component parts, so that it is not surprising that heat should not be
generated.
We must make a more diligent inquiry into this instance; for herbs and
green and moist vegetables appear to possess a latent heat, so small,
however, as not to be perceived by the touch in single specimens, but
when they are united and confined, so that their spirit cannot exhale
into the air, and they rather warm each other, their heat is at once
manifested, and even flame occasionally in suitable substances.
Here, too, we must make a more diligent inquiry; for quicklime, when
sprinkled with water, appears to conceive heat, either from its being
collected into one point (as we observed of herbs when confined), or
from the irritation and exasperation of the fiery spirit by water,
which occasions a conflict and struggle. The true reason will more
readily be shown if oil be used instead of water, for oil will
equally tend to collect the confined spirit, but not to irritate.
The experiment may be made more general, both by using the ashes and
calcined products of different bodies and by pouring different liquids
upon them.
A negative instance may be subjoined of other metals which are more
soft and soluble; for leaf gold dissolved by aqua regia, or lead by
aqua fortis, are not warm to the touch while dissolving, no more is
quicksilver (as far as I remember), but silver excites a slight heat,
and so does copper, and tin yet more plainly, and most of all iron and
steel, which excite not only a powerful heat, but a violent bubbling.
The heat, therefore, appears to be occasioned by the struggle which
takes place when these strong dissolvents penetrate, dig into, and tear
asunder the parts of those substances, while the substances themselves
resist. When, however, the substances yield more easily, scarcely any
heat is excited.
There is no negative instance with regard to the heat of animals,
except in insects (as has been observed), owing to their small size;
for in fishes, as compared with land animals, a lower degree rather
than a deprivation of heat is observable. In plants and vegetables,
both as to their exudations and pith when freshly exposed, there is no
sensible degree of heat. But in animals there is a great difference
in the degree, both in particular parts (for the heat varies near the
heart, the brain, and the extremities) and in the circumstances in
which they are placed, such as violent exercise and fevers.
Here, again, there is scarcely a negative instance. I might add that
the excrements of animals, even when they are no longer fresh, possess
evidently some effective heat, as is shown by their enriching the soil.
Such liquids (whether oily or watery) as are intensely acrid exhibit
the effects of heat, by the separation and burning of bodies after
some little action upon them, yet they are not at first warm to the
touch, but they act according to their affinity and the pores of the
substances to which they are applied; for aqua regia dissolves gold but
not silver--on the contrary, aqua fortis dissolves silver but not gold;
neither of them dissolves glass, and so of the rest.
Let spirits of wine be tried on wood, or butter, wax, or pitch, to see
if this will melt them at all by their heat; for the twenty-fourth
instance shows that they possess properties resembling those of heat in
causing incrustation. Let an experiment also be made with a graduated
glass or calendar,[93] concave at the top, by pouring well-rectified
spirits of wine into the cavity, and covering it up in order that they
may the better retain their heat, then observe whether their heat make
the water descend.
Spices and acrid herbs are sensibly warm to the palate, and still
more so when taken internally; one should see, therefore, on what
other substances they exhibit the effects of heat. Now, sailors tell
us that when large quantities of spices are suddenly opened, after
having been shut up for some time, there is some danger of fever and
inflammation to those who stir them or take them out. An experiment
might, therefore, be made whether such spices and herbs, when produced,
will, like smoke, dry fish and meat hung up over them.
There is an acrid effect and a degree of penetration in cold liquids,
such as vinegar and oil of vitriol, as well as in warm, such as oil of
marjoram and the like; they have, therefore, an equal effect in causing
animated substances to smart, and separating and consuming inanimate
parts. There is not any negative instance as to this, nor does there
exist any animal pain unaccompanied by the sensation of heat.
There are many effects common to cold and heat, however different
in their process; for snowballs appear to burn boys’ hands after
a little time, and cold no less than fire preserves bodies from
putrefaction--besides both heat and cold contract bodies. But it is
better to refer these instances and the like to the investigation of
cold.
XIII. In the third place we must exhibit to the understanding the
instances in which that nature, which is the object of our inquiries,
is present in a greater or less degree, either by comparing its
increase and decrease in the same object, or its degree in different
objects; for since the form of a thing is its very essence, and the
thing only differs from its form as the apparent from the actual
object, or the exterior from the interior, or that which is considered
with relation to man from that which is considered with relation to the
universe; it necessarily follows that no nature can be considered a
real form which does not uniformly diminish and increase with the given
nature. We are wont to call this our Table of Degrees, or Comparative
Instances.
_Table of the Degrees or Comparative Instances of Heat_
We will first speak of those bodies which exhibit no degree of heat
sensible to the touch, but appear rather to possess a potential heat,
or disposition and preparation for it. We will then go on to others,
which are actually warm to the touch, and observe the strength and
degree of it.
1. There is no known solid or tangible body which is by its own nature
originally warm; for neither stone, metal, sulphur, fossils, wood,
water, nor dead animal carcasses are found warm. The warm springs in
baths appear to be heated accidentally, by flame, subterraneous fire
(such as is thrown up by Etna and many other mountains), or by the
contact of certain bodies, as heat is exhibited in the dissolution of
iron and tin. The degree of heat, therefore, in inanimate objects is
not sensible to our touch; but they differ in their degrees of cold,
for wood and metal are not equally cold. [94] This, however, belongs to
the Table of Degrees of Cold.
2. But with regard to potential heat and predisposition to flame, we
find many inanimate substances wonderfully adapted to it, as sulphur,
naphtha, and saltpetre.
3. Bodies which have previously acquired heat, as horse dung from the
animal, or lime, and perhaps ashes and soot from fire, retain some
latent portion of it. Hence distillations and separations of substances
are effected by burying them in horse dung, and heat is excited in
lime by sprinkling it with water (as has been before observed).
