Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/578

 450 FABLE OF CUPID. sources of acting forms only and influences, for that matter is not simply but altogether destitute of active influence. And these assertions flow from an incredible error, unless the miracle be re moved by its having been an inveterate and gene ral opinion. For there is scarcely any error similar than that a person should not deem the active in fluence that virtue infused into matter, (through which it is kept from decay, so that the very least portion of matter is not buried in the whole bulk of the world, nor destroyed by the power of all the active influences, or in any way annihilated, and can be reduced to order ; nay, can occupy a portion of space and preserve resistance with im penetrable dimension, and itself by turns be capa ble of some action, and not forsake itself.) When, on the contrary, it is by far the most potent of all influences, and evidently insuperable, and, as it were, a mere fate and necessity. Yet this virtue Telesius does not attempt to refer to heat or cold. And rightly so : for neither do fire or numbness and congelation add or detract any thing from it nor have any power over it, when it yet meanwhile flourishes in the sun, at the centre of the earth, and everywhere. But he seems to fail, in that he recognises a certain and defined bulk of mat ter, is blind to that influence which should defend itself and preserve itself in its several parts, and (as it were, be clouded in the darkest shades of the Peripatetics) puts that in the place of an ac cessory, when it is mainly the principal, poising its own body, removing another, solid and ada mantine in itself, and whence emanate by an inviolable authority the decrees of the possible and the impossible. In the same manner the vulgar school puerilely catches at it with an easy grasp of words, imagining that the judgment is satisfied by making a canon of the impossibility of two bodies occupying the same space, but does not take into actual and full consideration that influ ence and the measure of which we speak ; over looking how much depends upon it, and how great a light would thence be thrown upon science. But to our point, that influence, whatever is its nature, is not comprehended in the elements of Telesins. We must now pass to that influence itself, which is, as it were, the antistrophe to this former, that namely which preserves the connexion of matter. For as matter will not suffer itself to be overwhelmed and perish by matter, so neither can it be separated from matter. And yet it is very doubtful whether this law of nature is equally peremptory with that other. But Telesius like Democritus supposed a vacuum heaped together and unbounded, that each ens singly might lay down its contiguous ens, and sometimes desert it involuntarily and with difficulty, (as they say,) but with a greater and a subdued violence, and he endeavoured to iiemonstrate this by sundry experiments, adducing ^specially those things which are cited here and ! there for the denying and refuting of a vacuum, and drawing out and enlarging these in such a I necessity ; but that if they were very much agitated they would admit a vacuum ; as in water hourglasses, in which if there be rather a small aperture through which the water can descend, they will want a spiracle for the water to descend ; but if a larger foramen even without a spiracle, the water being incumbent with a greater bulk on the foramen, and in no way im peding the vacuum above, is carried downwards. So in bellows, in which if you compress and shut them so that there be left no place for the air to glide in, and you afterward elevate and expand them, if the skin of the bellows be slight and weak, it will break, not so if very thick and firm ; and other experiments in like manner. But these experiments are neither exactly proved, nor are they quite satisfactory, nor conclusive on the question, and though Telesius thinks he adds to discoveries by means of them, and endeavours after a more subtle discernment of what others have seen but confusedly, yet he does not come off equal to his subject, nor educe a true conclu sion, but fails in the means : the misfortune, indeed, of Telesius and the Peripatetics, who in looking into experiments are like owls, not through the inefficiency of their faculties, but through the cataracts of opinions and impatience of fixed and full contemplation. But the very difficult question how far a vacuum is to be ad mitted, and with respect to what spaces there can be a coition or separation of seeds, and what there is on this head that is peremptory and invariable, I leave to my dissertation on the vacuum. Not does it relate much to my present purpose whether nature utterly abhors a vacuum, or (as Telesius imagines himself to speak more accurately) enti ties delight in mutual contact. This we hold to be plain that whether it be avoidance of a vacuum or inclination to contact does not in any degree depend on heat and cold, nor does Telesius assert that it doth, nor can it be so ascribed from any -ap pearance in the things themselves : since mitter moved from its place attracts doubtless other matter, whether that be hot or cold, liquid or dry, tiard or soft, friendly or adverse, so that a warm would sooner attract the coldest body to come to t, than suffer itself to be disjoined from and deserted by every kind of body. For the bond of matter is stronger than the aversion of heat and cold : and the sequacity of matter has no respect to the diversity of special forms; and so this nfluence of connexion is by no means from those elements of heat and cold. The two influences that are mutually opposite follow, which confer red (as may be seen) this rule of elements upon heat and cold, but by a right badly explicated. I mean those influences through which entitle?
 * manner as that the ens may appear to keep that
 * contiguity by being placed in a certain light