Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/570

 FABLE OF CUPID. averse to it, in the thinner bodies prompt and na turally fitted to motion, in the denser inclining to torpor and averse to it ; that heat therefore excites and effects motion through a rarefied space, and that cold represses and stops motion through a dense space : wherefore, say they, there are four co-essential natures and conjoined, and those two fold, preserving that order mutually which I have mentioned, (for heat and cold are the sources, the others are emanations,) yet that, nevertheless, they are ever concomitant and inseparable : that those four natures are heat, light, rarity, and mo tion : that, again, there are four opposed to these ; cold, darkness, denseness, and immobility : that the seats and regions of the first conjugation is in the heaven, the stars, and especially in the sun ; for that the heaven from its surpassing and pure heat, and from its matter mostly extended, is the hottest, most clear, and most rare, and highly in clined to motion ; that the earth, on the other hand, owing to its pure and unbroken cold, and from its matter being mostly contracted, was the most cold, dark, and dense, utterly motionless, and altogether unsuited by nature to motion ; but that the heights of heaven preserve their nature entire and unhurt, admitting some diversity among themselves, but altogether removed from the violence and attack of a contrary ; that there is the same consistency through the lower parts of the earth, that only the extreme parts where there is a nearness and meet ing of the contraries is uneasy, and suffers oppo sition from the mutual quarter ; that so the heaven is in its whole mass and substance full of heat, and entirely free from every contrary nature, but unequally, being in some parts more, in others less heated ; that the body of the stars is more intensely hot, the interstellary space less so; and, moreover, that some stars are more endued with heat than others, and are of a more vivid and darting kind of fire; yet so as that the contrary nature of cold, or any degree of it, never penetrates thither ; for that the body of the stars receive a diversity, but not a contrariety of nature : and that no judgment can be formed from common fire of the heat or fire of the heavenly bodies, which is pure, and in its natural state ; that our fire is in deed remote from its own natural place, tremulous, surrounded with contrary influences, of a low na ture, requiring, as it were, nourishment for its very existence, and wandering about, but that being placed in the heavens, disjoined from the impetus of any contrary force, it kept its own place, was preserved out of its own power, and out of that of similar influences, and preserved its own pro per course of action in freedom and unmolested. Also, that the whole heaven was full of light, though not in the same proportion throughout. For since of the stars that are known and can be reckoned up, some which can only be seen when the heavens are unclouded, and since there are in union give forth a white appearance, but do not seem distinct bodies of light, none can doubt that there are very many stars invisible to us, and that so the whole of the heaven is one body endowed with light, though not with light so strong and darting, nor with rays so deep and condensed as to pass beyond such vast distances, and to reach our sight. And he held that the whole heaven was of a thin and subtile substance, and that there was nothing in it that was crowded together, no thing forcedly compact, but that in this region matter was more expanded, in that less. Lastly, that the motion of the heaven was such as most suited a movable body, conversive or rotatory, for the circular motion is without a bound, and that for its own sake, as it were, this motion is in a right line, to a limit, and to some object, and as if for the purpose of attaining rest. That, there fore, the whole heaven was borne along by a cir cular motion, and that no part of it was without this motion, but that, nevertheless, as in the heat, light, and subtlety of the heavenly nature there exists inequality, so it is also seen in the motion or the heavens, and the more clearly since it admits more of human observation, and can even be mea sured. But that orbicular motion can differ both in its and in its course ; in speed so as to be either quicker or slower, in its course so as to be in a perfect circle, or to have somewhat of a spiral direction, and not to restore itself plainly to the same bound, (for a spiral line is compounded of a right line and a circle ;) and that so the heaven is subject to variety of speed, and to deflection from recovery of itself, or to a spiral course. For both the fixed stars and the planets are of unequal speed, and the planets evidently turn from tropic to tropic, and the higher the heavenly bodies are, the greater speed they acquire and the nearer compass. For if the phenomena are taken simply, and as they appear, and there be laid down one diurnal motion in the heavens, simple and natural, and that mathematical beauty of reducing motions to perfect circles be rejected, and spiral lines received, and those contrarieties of motions in consecutive order from east to west which they call the motion of the primum mobile, and again from west to east, which they call the planetary motion, are reduced to one, by still keeping the difference of the time in the return through over- haste, and through leaving of the course tc the difference as to the smoothness of the zodiac through the windings, it is plain that it will take place which I have said : for instance, that the moon, which is the lowest of the planets, will go the most slowly in a curve the least deep, and most expanded. And there may seem to this sect to be (on account of the distance from the opposite side) a firm and constant kind of nature of this portion of the heaven. But Telesius does the galaxy clusters of little stars, which by their j not clearly lay down whether he preserved the