Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/572

 444 FABLE OF CUPID. (which begets a whole,) but from the force and curb of the opposite nature. That the diversity, multiplicity, and even perplexity of operation is owing altogether to one of these three ; the power of heat, the arrangement of the matter, or the mode of its reduction : which three have, never theless, an inherent and mutual connexion and causality. That heat itself differs in power, quantity, speed, mean, and succession : that suc cession itself is varied in most bodies by tendency to approach or recede, whether by greater or less effort, by sudden motion, by gradual, or by return or repetition through greater and less intervals, and by changes of this kind. That calorics are, therefore, of a vast diversity in their nature and power, according to their purity and impurity, respect being had to their first source, the sun. Nor does heat cherish every kind of heat: but after they differ mutually a good number of de grees, they mutually destroy themselves not less than cold natures, and assume their peculiar powers of action, and are opposed to the acts the one of the other; so that Telesius makes the less with respect to the much greater caloric natures to hold the place as it were of traitors and con spirators with the cold against them. And so that vivid heat, which is in fire and darts, utterly destroys that slight heat which seems to glide secretly in water ; and in like manner the preter natural heat of putrid humours, suffocates and extinguishes natural heat: but that there is a great difference as to the fulness of a body of heat, is too plain to need explanation. For one or two coals of fire do not throw out such a warmth as many do together; and that the effect of the ful ness of heat is remarkably shown in the multipli cation of the sun s heat through the reflection of his rays ; for the number of his rays is dou bled through simple reflection, multiplied though various. But to the quantity or copiousness of heat, there should be ascribed or added also its union, which is best seen by the obliquity and perpendicular of rays, with which the nearer the direct and reflex ray meets, and toward the acuter angles, the greater degree of heat it sends forth in proportion. Nay, even the sun himself, when amongst those greater and more potent fires of the fixed stars, the Serpent, the Dogstar, Spica, emit greater heat. But that the delay of heat is evi dently an operation of the greatest moment, since all the influences of nature have respect to times, so as that some time is required to the putting its influences into action, and a considerable time to the giving them strength. That so the delay of beat turns equal heat into progressive and unequal, because the antecedent and subsequent heat is joined at the same time ; that that is apparent in the autumnal heats, because they are perceived to be more ardent in the solstitial heats, and in the aiternoons of summer, because they are found to be more ardent in the middays of those seasons; also, that in colder regions the feebleness of tli heat is sometimes compensated by the delay ana length of the summer days; but that the power and efficacy of the mean is remarkable in the con veyance of heat. For that hence, the temperature of the seasons is very various, so that the atmo sphere is found, by an inconstancy that is disco verable, to be sometimes cold in summer days, sometimes moist in winter days, the sun in the mean while preserving his legitimate course and ordinary distance; that the corn and vine are more changed by the south winds and a stormy sky; and that the whole position and emission of the atmosphere, at one time pestilential and morbid, at another genial and healthful, according to the various revolutions of the year, has its rise from this, namely, from the varying of the medium of the air, which gathers its diverse disposition from the very vicissitude and alteration of the seasons, perhaps in a long series. But that, as there is a multifold ratio, so is there a very great virtue of the succession of heat, and of the order in which heat follows heat. For that the sun could not send out so numerous and prolific a generation, unless the configuration of the body of the sun moving toward the earth, and the parts of the earth, were a partaker of the very great inequality and variation ; for the sun is moved both in a circle and rapidly, and obliquely, and recalls itself, so as to be both absent and present, both nearer and more remote, and more perpendi cular and more oblique, and returning swifter and slower, so as that the heat emanating from the sun is never the same, nor ever recovers itself in a little while, (excepting under the tropics ;) so that so great a variation of the power generating admirably agrees with this so great variation in that which is generated. To which can be added the very diverse nature of the medium or vehicle. That the other circumstances asserted of the ine quality and degrees of heat alone, can be referred to the vicissitudes and varieties of succession in different heats. That Aristotle, therefore, rightly attributed the generation and corruption of things to the oblique path of the sun, making that as it were their efficient cause, if he had not indeed corrupted the truth he discovered, through his unbounded rage for uttering decisions and of making himself the lawgiver of nature, and of adapting and of settling all things so as to make them harmonize with his dogmas. For that he ought to have assigned generation and corruption (which is never entirely privative, but is produc tive of a second generation) to the inequality of the sun s heat, according to the whole that is of the approaching and receding of the sun jointly, j not the generation to the approaching, the cor- ! ruption to the receding separately, which he did, blunderingly and following the vulgar error. But if any should think it strange that the generation of things is attributed to the sun, when it is