148 NOVUM ORGANUM 



Nor again, would we be thought to mean (even when 

 treating of simple natures) any abstract forms or ideas, 

 either undefined or badly denned in matter. For when we 

 speak of forms, we mean nothing else than those laws and 

 regulations of simple action which arrange and constitute 

 any simple nature, such as heat, light, weight, in every 

 species of matter, and in a susceptible subject. The form 

 of heat or form of light, therefore, means no more than the 

 law of heat or the law of light. Nor do we ever abstract or 

 withdraw ourselves from things, and the operative branch 

 of philosophy. When, therefore, we say (for instance) in 

 our investigation of the form of heat, Keject rarity, or, Kar- 

 ity is not of the form of heat, it is the same as if we were to 

 say, Man can superinduce heat on a dense body, or the re 

 verse, Man can abstract or ward off heat from a rare body. 



But if our forms appear to any one to be somewhat ab 

 stracted, from their mingling and uniting heterogeneous 

 objects (the heat, for instance, of the heavenly bodies ap 

 pears to be very different from that of fire; the fixed red of 

 the rose and the like, from that which is apparent in the 

 rainbow, or the radiation of opal or the diamond; 31 death 

 by drowning, from that by burning, the sword, apoplexy, 

 or consumption ; and yet they all agree in the common na 

 tures of heat, redness, and death), let him be assured that 

 his understanding is inthralled by habit, by general appear 

 ances and hypotheses. For it is most certain that, however 

 heterogeneous and distinct, they agree in the form or law 

 which regulates heat, redness, or death; and that human 

 power cannot be emancipated and freed from the common 



31 This general law or form has been well illustrated by Newton s discovery 

 of the decomposition of colors. 



