Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/583

 APHORISMS. The same is the way and the perfection of truth and of power: this, namely, to discover the forms of things, from the knowledge of which follovveth true contemplation and free operation. The discovery of forms which proceeds by the exclusion or rejection of natures is simple and one. For all natures, whicn are absent in a given pre sent nature, or present in a given absent nature, pertain not to form; and, after complete rejection or negation, the form and affirmation remains. If you inquire, for example, into the form of heat, and find water hot, yet not lucid, reject light: if you find air thin, yet not hot, reject tenuity. This is short to say, but it is reached by a long circuit. The contemplative and the operative utterance of words differ not in reality. For when you say, light belongs not to the form of heat, it is the same as if you were to say, in producing heat it is not necessary to produce light also. (The rest were not finished.) Nor do these proceed under our authority Thou, Father, turning to the works which thy hands made, saw that all things were very good ; but man, turning to the works which his hands made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit. Therefore, if we have laboured amid thy works, thou wilt make us partakers of thy gratulation and of thy Sabbath. We humbly entreat that this disposition may abide in us; and that by our hands the human family may be endowed with new alms from thee. These we commend to thy eternal love, through our Jesus, thy Christ, God with us. J. A. C. THE END OF VOL. I.