NOVUM OROANUM 109 



cause. 2 Of these, however, the latter is so far from being 

 beneficial, that it even corrupts the sciences, except in the 

 intercourse of man with man. The discovery of form is 

 considered desperate. As for the efficient cause and matter 

 (according to the present system of inquiry and the received 

 opinions concerning them, by which they are placed remote 

 from, and without any latent process toward form), they are 

 but desultory and superficial, and of scarcely any avail to 

 real and active knowledge. Nor are we unmindful of our 

 having pointed out and corrected above the error of the 

 human mind, in assigning the first qualities of essence to 

 forms. 3 For although nothing exists in nature except indi 

 vidual bodies, 4 exhibiting clear individual effects according 

 to particular laws, yet in each branch of learning, that very 

 law, its investigation, discovery, and development, are the 

 foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore, 

 and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by 

 the term form, 5 adopting that word because it has grown 

 into common use, and is of familiar occurrence. 



2 These divisions are from Aristotle s Metaphysics, where they are termed, 



1. vAij r) TO i&amp;gt;noKeifj.evov. 2. T T ^ % v elvai. 3. odev i) apx*? TIJS KtVTj&amp;lt;rewS 4. TO ^ fvexev 

 Kai TO ayaOov. 



3 See Aphorism li. and second paragraph of Aphorism Ixv. in the first book. 



4 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 some 

 times 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. 



5 Bacon s definition is obscure. All the idea we have of a law of nature 



