THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 507 



classed under nature, and a mysterious PJiilosopJiia Prima 

 or Sapience is postulated which deals with the " highest 

 stages of things," divine and human. The axioms which 

 Bacon gives as specimens of this Sapience are not very 

 suggestive of what this hitherto wanting branch of science 



Human Learning 



would be like ; they are either logical axioms or fanciful 

 analogies between natural theology, physics, and morals. 

 The scheme as it stands is a curious product of a transi- 

 tion period of thought. With its " errors of nature," — 

 the anomies in which nature is driven out of its course 

 by " the perverseness, insolence, and frowardness of 

 matter," — and with its " purified magic," we recognise its 

 author as on the fringe of the Middle Ages, but when 



