Advancement of Learning 97 



causes, which I am moved to report not as omitted, but as 

 misplaced ; and yet if it were but a fault in order, I would 

 not speak of it: for order is matter of illustration, but 

 pertaineth not to the substance of sciences. But this mis 

 placing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great impro- 

 ficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of 

 final causes mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath 

 intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and 

 physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon 

 these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest 

 and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not 

 only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by 

 Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall 

 upon these flats of discoursing causes. 1 For to say that the 

 hairs of the eyelids are for a quickset and fence about the sight; 

 or that the firmness of the skins and hides of living creatures 

 is to defend them from the extremities of heat or cold ; or that 

 the bones are for the columns or beams, whereupon the frames 

 of the bodies of living creatures are built : or that the leaves 

 of trees are for protecting of the fruit ; or that the clouds are 

 for watering of the earth ; or that the solidness of the earth 

 is for the station and mansion of living creatures and the 

 like, is well inquired and collected in metaphysique, but 

 in physique they are impertinent. Nay, they are indeed 

 but remorce, and hindrances to stay and slug the ship 

 from further sailing; and have brought this to pass, that 

 the search of the physical causes hath been neglected, 

 and passed in silence. And therefore the natural philo 

 sophy of Democritus and some others (who did not suppose 

 a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the 

 form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or 

 proofs of nature, which they term, fortune) seemeth to me, 

 as far as I can judge by the recital and fragments which 

 remain unto us, in particularities of physical causes, more 

 real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; 

 whereof both intermingled final causes, the one as a part of 

 theology, and the other as a part of logic, which were the 

 favourite studies respectively of both those persons. Not 

 because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be 

 inquired, being kept within their own province; but 



1 Aristot. Phys. ii. 8, 2, where he illustrates by the teeth. Also 

 Plat. Tim. iii. 70, and Galen, De Usu Partinm. 



