Page:Theory of Mind of Roger Bacon.djvu/41

 therefore necessary. The Species must be thought of in relation rather to its Agent than to the Effect.

And here it is that the notion of the Species as a small or a weak reproduction of the Agent, characterized by incompleteness of being, is necessary to make the presentation clear. It is identical with its Agent in all saving this character of its being; and differs from it only as a boy, for example, differs from the man. But lacking only in that respect it can stand for its principal and that which the Principal would do were it actually present. But is this the Species which is educed from the Matter of the Patient? It is not—in the essential conception of that Species. For, the force of Bacon’s description of that Species lies, line by line and proof by proof, in its incompleteness as defined by reference to the complete Effect. But is there not some sense in which this Species too may be conceived as educed from the Matter of the Patient? There seems to be; even though we have no clearly detailed statement of Bacon’s for it. And it is this. The Agent acts as a whole and the Patient is affected part by part, as before. The Species is again the incomplete effect of the Agent; but the effect here is incomplete by reference to the Agent, not incomplete by reference to the complete Effect. It is the representative of its Principal the Agent, and there will therefore never be any “completer effect.” The Patient is to be conceived here as not only changed part by part, but each part is only partly changed. And in this case, if we take a cross section at some given instant, the Agent will not stand over against a complete Effect, but over against an incomplete Effect—an Effect which is a small or a weak reproduction of itself.

This, however, is in point only when the Agent is in immediate contact with the Patient. But what shall we say for those cases in which the Agent and the Patient are as far removed as the Sun and the Earth? Simply, that while the Sun could not itself act, it could do so through its virtue or Species. And in this manner. The medium between the Sun and the Earth will have been assimilated; for that medium’s “first part” will have been in direct contact with the Sun and accordingly altered by this immediate contact. This first part will have altered the second part, and the second part the next succeeding part and so on up to that part which is in immediate contact with the Patient. And for just the same reason that the first part was able to alter the second part, the second the next succeeding part and so on, for just that same reason by immediate contact this last part will be able to alter the Patient—and the reason is, that so far as efficiency is concerned this part is the Sun; the virtue of the Sun is actually there. The first part of the Patient is altered by the last part of the medium, to speak exactly, and