Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/571

 FABLE OF CUPID. ancient bounds so as to conceive that whatever was situated above the moon was the same with the moon itseir or whether he thought that an Opposing power ascended higher, but he held a portion of the earth (which is the seat of an opposite nature) to he in the same way quite of an unmixed and solid nature, and impenetrable by heavenly influences. But he considered that there was no reason for inquiring into the nature of that portion, only that it was endowed with these four natures, cold, darkness, density, and rest, and those perfect, and no way impaired. But he assigns to the generation of things the part of the earth toward its surface as a kind of bark or incrustation, and that all the entities which have come to our knowledge in any way, even the heaviest, hardest, and the lowest down, metals, stones, the sea, are produced from the earth, subdued in some part by the heat of the heaven, and which has already conceived some what of heat, radiation, tenuity, and mobility, and which partakes of a middle nature between the sun and the pure earth. It is requisite, therefore, that pure earth be placed lower than the bottom of the sea, than minerals, and every thing that is generated : and that from that pure earth, even to the moon, or perhaps higher, there be placed a certain middle nature, proceeding from the tem peraments and refractions of the heaven and earth. But having sufficiently fortified the interior of both kingdoms, he proceeds to the march and to the war. For in the space within the outermost region of heaven and the innermost of earth, is all kind of tumult, and conflict, and horror; as it is with empires, the borders of which are infested with incursions whilst the interior provinces enjoy profound peace. That so these natures with their concretions have the power of incessantly gene rating and multiplying themselves, and of pour ing themselves on every side, and of occupying the whole bulk of nature, and of mutually op posing and invading each other, and of casting one the other from their proper seats, and of establishing themselves in them ; that they also have the power of another nature and its actions, both those that are proper to perception and appre hension, and that from this kind of perception they have the power of moving and adjusting themselves; and that from this conflict is deduced the whole variety of all entities, actions, and influences. But it seems elsewhere to have ascribed to it, though rather by the way and hesitatingly, somewhat of the property of matter ; first, that it should not admit of increase or dimi nution through forms and active entities, but should be made up of one whole : then, that the motion of gravity or descent should be referred to it. He moreover inserts something on the black ness of matter : but that he does plainly ; that heat and cold by the same force and power remit their strength in extended matter expand it in contracted, since they do not fill their own mea sure, but that of matter. But Telesius devises a method by which to explain the rise of so various a fecundity of entities out of this discord. And first he has regard to the earth, though the inferior element, and shows why it is that it has not been and never will be absorbed and destroyed by the sun. The chief reason he makes to be the im mense distance of the earth from the fixed stars, sufficiently great from the sun itself, and such as it should be, well proportioned in measure. Secondly, the declination of the sun s rays from the perpendicular, respect being had to the different parts of the earth, that for instance the sun should never be vertically above the greater part of the earth, or the falling of his rays perpendicular; so that it can never occupy the whole globe of the earth with any very powerful body of heat. Thirdly, the obliquity of the sun s motion in its passage through the zodiac, respect being had to the same parts of the earth whence the heat of the sun, in whatever power it is, is not incessantly increased, but returns by greater intervals. Fourthly, the celerity of the sun in respect of his diurnal motion, which accomplishes so great a course in so small a space of time, whence arises a less delay of heat, nor is there any moment of time in which the heat may settle. Fifthly, the continuation of series of bodies between the sun and the earth ; so that the sun does not send forth an unbroken power of heat through a vacuum, but passing through so many resisting bodies, and having to do and to contend with each, is weak ened over this immense space ; and so much the more, since the further it proceeds and the weaker it becomes, so much the more increase of resist ance does it find in the bodies, and most of all after arriving at the surface of the earth, where there seems not only a resistance, but even some degree of repulsion. And he thus lays down his theory on the process of change. That there is as it were a deadly and interminable war, and that those contrary natures do not come together by any compact, nor by a third, excepting primi tive matter. That either nature, therefore, natu rally seeks the destruction of the other, and the putting into matter itself, and our nature only, so that it is the object of each (as he repeatedly and very plainly saith) to effect a change of the other, of the sun, the change of the earth into the sun; and of the earth, the change of the sun into the earth; and that the regularity and justly propor tioned motions of all things present no obstacle to this theory ; nor that every action has in its duo course its beginning, its progress, its increase, it* diminution, and its rest: that, nevertheless, not any of these happen through the laws of order, but entirely through want of restraint and order ; for that the whole difference, whether of excess or inferiority in influence and action, is not occasioned by the direction of the effort of the motion itself.