Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/116

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His History of Life and Death may be regarded as a treatise upon the art of Preservation of Health, and Prolongation of Life.

As a foundation of his investigations he considers,

Of consumption he says there are two causes: the depredation of vital spirit and the depredation of ambient air; and if the action of either of these agents can be destroyed, the decomposition is more or less retarded, as in bodies enclosed in wax or coffins, where the action of the external air is excluded: and when the action of both these causes can be prevented, the body defies decomposition, as in bricks and burnt bodies, where the vital air is expelled by exposure of the clay to the ambient air, and afterwards by fire; or as a fly in amber, more beautifully entombed than an Egyptian monarch.

In making the agents less predatory, and the patients less depredable, the science of the retardation of consumption consequently consists.

He proceeds, therefore, with his usual accuracy, to consider how these objects are to be attained; and, having considered them, he proceeds to the doctrine of reparation, both of the whole frame and the decayed parts.

His History of Life and Death contains his favourite doctrine of vital spirit, or excitability, or life, which he notices in various parts of his works.

In this place more cannot be attempted than, as a specimen of the whole of this important subject, to explain one or two of the positions.

The foundation position is, that "All tangible bodies contain a spirit enveloped with the grosser body. There is no known body, in the upper parts of the earth, without its spirit, whether it be generated by the attenuating and concocting power of the celestial warmth, or otherwise; for the pores of tangible bodies are not a vacuum, but either contain air, or the peculiar spirit of the substance; and this not a vis, an energy, or a fiction, but a real, subtile, and invisible, and, therefore, neglected body, circumscribed by place and dimension." This doctrine is thus stated in the Excursion:

As another specimen, the mode of explaining the condensation of spirit by flight may be selected.

The spirit, he says, is condensed by flight,—cold,—appeasing, and quelling. The condensation by flight is when there is an antipathy between the spirit and the body upon which it acts; as, in opium, which is so exceedingly powerful in condensing the spirit, that a grain will tranquillize the nerves, and by a few grains they may be so compressed as to be irrecoverable. The touched spirit may retreat into its shell for a time or forever: or it may, when fainting, be recalled, by the application of a stimulant, as surprise from a sudden impulse; a blow, or a glass of water thrown on the face; or the prick of a pin, or the action of mind on mind.

As another specimen, his sentiments upon death, the decomposition of compounds, may be selected.

In his doctrine of motion, he says, "The political motion is that by which the parts of the body are restrained, from their own immediate appetites or tendencies, to unite in such a state as may preserve the existence of the whole body. Thus, the spirit, which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due subjection; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts unite as metals rust, fluids turn sour; and, in animals, when the spirit which held the parts together escapes, all things are dissolved, and return to their own natures or principles: the oily parts to themselves, the aqueous to themselves, &c., upon which necessarily ensues that odour, that unctuosity, that confusion of parts, observable in putrefaction." So true is it, that in nature all is beauty; that, notwithstanding our partial views and distressing associations, the forms of death, misshapen as we suppose them, are but the tendencies to union in similar natures.

The knowledge of this science Bacon considers of the utmost importance to our well-being:—that the action of the spirit is the cause of consumption and dissolution;—is the agent which produces all bodily and mental effects;—influences the will in the production of all animal motions, as in the whale and the elephant;—and is the cause of all our cheerfulness or melancholy:—that the perfection of our being consists in the proper portion