Novum organum

[71]Τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι, or ἦν οὐσία of Aristotle.—See lib. iii. Metap.

[72] These divisions are from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where they are termed, 1. ὓλη ἢ τὸ ὑποκείμενον. 2. τὸ τὶ ἦν εἶναι. 3. ὅθεν ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως. 4. τὸ οὗ ἕνεκεν—καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν.

[73] See Aphorism li. and second paragraph of Aphorism lxv. in the first book.

[74] Bacon means, that although there exist in nature only individualities, yet a certain number of these may have common properties, and be controlled by the same laws. Now, these homogeneous qualities which distinguish them from other individuals, lead us to class them under one expression, and sometimes under a single term. Yet these classes are only pure conceptions in Bacon’s opinion, and cannot be taken for distinct substances. He evidently here aims a blow at the Realists, who concluded that the essence which united individualities in a class was the only real and immutable existence in nature, inasmuch as it entered into their ideas of individual substances as a distinct and essential property, and continued in the mind as the mold, type or pattern of the class, while its individual forms were undergoing perpetual renovation and decay.—Ed.

[75] Bacon’s definition is obscure. All the idea we have of a law of nature consists in invariable sequence between certain classes of phenomena; but this cannot be the complete sense attached by Bacon to the term form, as he employs it in the fourth aphorism as convertible with the nature of any object; and again, in the first aphorism, as the natura naturans, or general law or condition in any substance or quality—natura naturata—which is whatever its form is, or that particular combination of forces which impresses a certain nature upon matter subject to its influence. Thus, in the Newtonian sense, the form of whiteness would be that combination of the seven primitive rays of light which give rise to that color. In combination with this word, and affording a still further insight into its meaning, we have the phrases, latens processus ad formam, et latens schematismus corporum. Now, the latens schematismus signifies the internal texture, structure, or configuration of bodies, or the result of the respective situation of all the parts of a body; while the latens processus ad formam points out the gradation of movements which takes place among the molecula of bodies when they either conserve or change their figure. Hence we may consider the form of any quality in body as something convertible with that quality, i.e., when it exists the quality is present, and vice versâ. In this sense, the form of a thing differs only from its efficient cause in being permanent, whereas we apply cause to that which exists in order of time.

The latens processus and latens schematismus are subordinate to form, as concrete exemplifications of its essence. The former is the secret and invisible process by which change is effected, and involves the principle since called the law of continuity. Thus, the succession of events between the application of the match to the expulsion of the bullet is an instance of latent progress which we can now trace with some degree of accuracy. It also more directly refers to the operation by which one form or condition of being is induced upon another. For example, when the surface of iron becomes rusty, or when water is converted into steam, some change has taken place, or latent process from one form to another. Mechanics afford many exemplifications of the first latent process we have denoted, and chemistry of the second. The latens schematismus is that visible structure of bodies on which so many of their properties depend. When we inquire into the constitution of crystals, and into the internal structure of plants, we are examining into their latent schematism.—Ed.

[76] By the recent discoveries in electric magnetism, copper wires, or, indeed, wires of any metal, may be transformed into magnets; the magnetic law, or form, having been to that extent discovered.

[77] Haller has pursued this investigation in his “Physiology,” and has left his successors little else to do than repeat his discoveries.—Ed.

[78] Bacon here first seems pregnant with the important development of the higher calculus, which, in the hands of Newton and Descartes, was to effect as great a revolution in philosophy as his method.—Ed.

[79] By spirit, Bacon here plainly implies material fluid too fine to be grasped by the unassisted sense, which rather operates than reasons. We sometimes adopt the same mode of expression, as in the words spirits of nitre, spirits of wine. Some such agency has been assumed by nearly all the modern physicists, a few of whom, along with Bacon, would leave us to gather from their expressions, that they believe such bodies endowed with the sentient powers of perception. As another specimen of his sentiment on this subject, we may refer to a paragraph on the decomposition of compounds, in his essay on death, beginning—“The spirit which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due subjection; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts unite.”—Ed.

[80] The theory of the Epicureans and others. The atoms are supposed to be invisible, unalterable particles, endued with all the properties of the given body, and forming that body by their union. They must be separated, of course, which either takes a vacuum for granted, or introduces a tertium quid into the composition of the body.

[81] Compare the three following aphorisms with the last three chapters of the third book of the “De Augmentis Scientiarum.”

[82] Bacon gives this unfortunate term its proper signification; μετα, in composition, with the Greeks signifying change or mutation. Most of our readers, no doubt, are aware that the obtrusion of this word into technical philosophy was purely capricious, and is of no older date than the publication of Aristotle’s works by Andronicus of Rhodes, one of the learned men into whose hands the manuscripts of that philosopher fell, after they were brought by Sylla from Athens to Rome. To fourteen books in these MSS. with no distinguishing title, Andronicus is said to have prefixed the words τα μετα τα φυσικα, to denote the place which they ought to hold either in the order of Aristotle’s arrangement, or in that of study. These books treat first of those subjects which are common to matter and mind; secondly, of things separate from matter, i.e. of God, and of the subordinate spirits, which were supposed by the Peripatetics to watch over particular portions of the universe. The followers of Aristotle accepted the whimsical title of Andronicus, and in their usual manner allowed a word to unite things into one science which were plainly heterogeneous. Their error was adopted by the Peripatetics of the Christian Church. The schoolmen added to the notion of ontology, the science of the mind, or pneumatology, and as that genus of being has since become extinct with the schools, metaphysics thus in modern parlance comes to be synonymous with psychology.

It were to be wished that Bacon’s definition of the term had been accepted, and mental science delivered from one of the greatest monstrosities in its nomenclature, yet Bacon whimsically enough in his De Augmentis includes mathematics in metaphysics.—Ed.