Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/568

 440 FABLE OF CUPID. BO vast, so broad, so extended, in which so vast nn apparatus of things is manifested and is con stantly present, seems to be fixed in a solid and constant nature. But the power of formation seems plainly to desert the bodies of liquids. For there is not found in all nature one animal or plant in a body of mere fluid. That infinite variety of form, therefore, is cut off and taken away from the nature of liquid. No small variety, however, does remain, as is clear in the so great variety of fusibles, juices, distilled bodies, and the like. But in aerial and pneumatic bodies a much greater variety is enclosed, and there seems drawn over them a somewhat promiscuous simili tude of things. That influence, indeed, of colours and tastes, by which liquids are in some instances distinguished, ceases indeed altogether here; but that of scents and of some other properties remains yet, so as that they pass through, are confused, and do not inhere ; so that on the whole variety disappears in proportion as we approach the na ture of fire. But after we are come to the nature of fire, and that rectified and purer, every organ, every peculiar property, every dissimilarity is put off, and nature seems to coalesce as it were in a pyramidal point, and to have reached the limit of its own proper action. Heraclitus called, there fore, the kindling of fire peace, because it made nature one; but generation war, because it made it manifold. In order, therefore, to explain by some means the manner in which things ebbed and flowed as a stream, from variety to simplicity and from simplicity to variety, he supposed fire was condensed and then rarefied, yet so as that rarefying toward the nature of fire should be the direct and progressive action of nature ; but the densation as it were a receding from and leaving of nature. He thought that both took place by fate and at certain periods, (according to the sum,) so that there would be at some time or other a conflagration of the world, which is now moved in its orbit, and then a renovation, and so on suc cessively forever. But he held a diverse order of incension and extinction, if any one is well versed in that slight remain of information con cerning mm and his opinions which hath de scended to our time. But in the scale of incension he in no way differed from the usual and well known opinion, that the progress of rarefication and extenuation was from earth to water, from water to air, from air to fire : but he did not hold the same return, but plainly inverted the order. 1 or he asserted that fire brought out earth through extinction as a kind of dregs and soot of fire; that tney next conceived and collected moisture, whence came the flowing forth of water, which aain emitted and breathed out air, so that a sud den, not a gradual change is made from fire to water. And these or better notions did those con- &amp;gt;eive who asserted one element of things, looking upon nature simply, not for the sake of strife. And they are indeed to be praised, because they ascribed but one vest to Cupid, that which approaches nearest *o bareness, and as it were a veil of the thinnest ana lightest kind. But r&amp;gt;v the vest of Cupid I mean a certain form attributed to primary matter, which is asserted to be sub stantially homogeneous with the form of some one of the secondary entities. It will be easy to prove that the assertions we have recited respect ing water, air, fire, are groundless, and here we can take them by the genus, and not severally by the species, into consideration. In the first place, then, the ancients did not inquire with accuracy into the nature of elements, but only made it their object to find out the chief virtues of those bodies that were clearly under the senses, and those virtues they supposed were the elements of things, through a seeming, not a real and true superiority of nature. For they thought that such a nature was worthy of being said to be solely that which it appeared : but every thing else they held to be the nature itself, though by no means according with the appearance ; so that they seem to have spoken metaphorically, or to have been under some fascination, since the more powerful impiession drew the remaining properties after it. But a true philosopher would look with equal attention to all the circumstances, and would consider those to be the elements of things which agreed with the very least and fewest and the most solitary of entities, and not only with the greatest, most numerous, and most prolific. For although we men are most struck by those entities which mostly meet onr sight, the bosom of nature is open to them all. But if they hold that their opinion of an element, not on account of superiority of nature, but simply, they seem indeed to fall into the adoption of a harsher figure ; since the thing is plainly made equivocal, and their assertion cannot be predicated either of natural fire, air, or water, but of a certain fan tastical and notional fire, (and so of the rest,) which retains the name without the definition of fire. They seem, too, forced into the same diffi culties with those who assert abstract matter. For, as they introduce an entire, so do these a partial, potential, and fantastic matter. For they lay down matter in one respect (as, that is, their supposed element) with form and action; in other respects only potential. Nor is any thing gained by this kind of sole principle more than by the supposition of abstract matter, unless it be deemed an advantage that it is entertainable by the comprehension of man, in which human contemplation is more fixed and acquiesces, and through which the notion of the element itself is made somewhat fuller, but as to every other cir cumstance more difficult and abstruse. But pre dicaments did not rule then, so as that this element of abstract nature might lie hid under the protect ing tutelage of the predicament of the substance.