FRANCIS BACON 9 



the aperture, the air would be drawn in with a hissing noise, or 

 whether as much water would be drawn into it when immersed, as 

 would have been drawn into it at first, if it had not continued sealed. 

 For it is probable (or, at least, worth making the experiment) that 

 this might have happened, or might happen, because perseverance has 

 a similar effect upon bodies which are a little less homogeneous. A 

 stick bent together for some time does not rebound, which is not 

 owing to any loss of quantity in the wood during the time, for the 

 same would occur (after a larger time) in a plate of steel, which does 

 not evaporate. If the experiment of simple perseverance should fail, 

 the matter should not be given up, but other means should be em- 

 ployed. For it would be no small advantage, if bodies could be 

 endued with fixed and constant natures by violence. Air could then 

 be converted into water by condensation, with other similar effects ; 

 for man is more the master of violent motions than of any other 

 means. 



III. The third of our seven methods is referred to that great 

 practical engine of nature as well as of art, cold and heat. Here, 

 man's power limps, as it were, with one leg. For we possess the 

 heat of fire, which is infinitely more powerful and intense than that 

 of the sun (as it reaches us), and that of animals. But we want 

 cold, except such as we can obtain in winter, in caverns, or by 

 surrounding objects with snow and ice, which, perhaps, may be 

 compared in degree with the noontide heat of the sun in tropical 

 countries, increased by the reflection of mountains and walls. For 

 this degree of heat and cold can be borne for a short period only 

 by animals, yet it is nothing compared with the heat of a burning 

 furnace, or the corresponding degree of cold. Everything with us 

 has a tendency to become rarefied, dry, and wasted, and nothing to 

 become condensed or soft, except by mixtures, and, as it were, 

 spurious methods. Instances of cold, therefore, should be searched 

 for most diligently, such as may be found by exposing bodies upon 

 buildings in a hard frost, in subterraneous caverns, by surrounding 

 bodies with snow and ice in deep places excavated for that purpose, 

 by letting bodies down into wells, by burying bodies in quicksilver 

 and metals, by immersing them in streams which petrify wood, by 

 burying them in the earth (which the Chinese are reported to do 

 with their china, masses of which, made for that purpose, are said 



