Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/563

 OF THE PRINCIPLES AND ORIGINS OF NATURE, ACCORDING TO THE FABLES OF CUPID AND HEAVEN: OR, THE PHILOSOPHY OF PARMENIDES, TELESIUS, AND PARTICULARLY OF DEMOCRITU8, AS EXHIBITED IN THE FABLE CONCERNING CUPID. THE fables of the ancients repecting Cupid or Love, cannot be made to agree in one and the same person. They indeed profess to speak of two Cupids of two different periods, the one the most ancient of the gods, the other of a much later era. At present we will treat of the ancient Cupid. They relate that this Cupid was the most ancient of the gods, and therefore of all things, excepting chaos, which is said to have been coeval with him. This Cupid had no pa rent, but being united to heaven, was the father of the gods and of all things. Some indeed would derive him from an egg over which Night brooded. Different attributes are ascribed to him, so that he is represented as a boy blind, naked, winged, and armed with darts. His chief and especial influence is over the uniting of bodies. To him were given the keys of the earth, the sea, and the sky. Another and younger Cupid is also celebrated in fable, the son of Ve nus. To him are ascribed the attributes of the ancient Cupid, besides many peculiar to himself. This fable, with the sequel respecting heaven, seems to embrace in a concise parable the doc trine of the elements of things and of the origin of the world, and to agree with that of Demo- critus, except that it appears somewhat closer, tnore reasonable, and clearer. For the observa tions of that confessedly acute and accurate philosopher nevertheless were of a too diffusive nature, and did not seem to keep their proper limit, and to confine and support themselves suffi ciently. And indeed these dogmas, which lie veiled in the parable, although better regulated , are yet of such a nature as to appear to have come from the. mind left to itself, and not uniformly and gradually assisted by experience; for this seems to have been the common fault of antiqui ty. But it must first be remarked, that the opi nions brought forward in this part of my treatise were the conclusions and productions of unassist ed reason, and rested on perception alone, the failing and imperfect oracles of which are de servedly rejected, now that the higher and more certain light of the Divine Word has shone upon men. That chaos therefore which was coeval with Cupid, signified the confused and disordered mass or collection of matter. But matter itself, with its power and nature, in a word, the elements of things were shadowed out in Cupid himself. He is introduced without a parent, that is, without a cause : for cause is, as it were, the parent of effect; and in tropical dis course nothing is therefore more usual than for the parent to stand for cause, and the offspring for effect. But there cannot be in nature (for we always except God) any cause of the first mat ter, and of its proper influence and action, for there is nothing prior in time to the first matter. Therefore there is no efficient nor any thing more known to nature; there is therefore neither genus nor form. Wherefore whatever primitive matter is, together with its influence and action, it is sui generis, and admits of no definition drawn from perception, and is to be taken just as it is found, and not to be judged of from any preconceived idea. For the mode of it, if it is given to us to know it, cannot be judged of by means of its cause, seeing that it is, next to God, the cause of causes, itself without a cause. For there is a certain real limit of causes in nature, and it would argue levity and inexperience in a philoso pher to require or imagine a cause for the last and positive power and law of nature, as much as it would not to demand a cause in those that are subordinate. On this account the ancients have fabled Cupid to be without a parent, that is, without a cause. And they did so not without design. Nay, per haps there is not any thing more important; for nothing has more corrupted philosophy than the seeking after the parents of Cupid ; I mean, that philosophers have not received and embraced th elements of things as they are found in nature, as a certain fixed and positive doctrine, and as it were by an experimental trust in them ; but have rather deduced them from the laws of words, and from dialectics and slight mathematical conclu-