THE SECOND BOOK. “115 
Ff 
respect nature united or collected, the third contemplateth 
nature diffused or distributed. Nature is collected either 
into one entire total, or else into the same principles or 
seeds. So as the first doctrine is touching the contexture 
or configuration of things, as de mundo, de universttale 
rerum. ‘The second is the doctrine concerning the prin- 
ciples or originals of things. The third is the doctrine 
concerning all variety and particularity of things; whether 
it be of the differing substances, or their differing qualities 
and natures ; whereof there needeth no enumeration, this 
part being but as a gloss or paraphrase that attendeth 
upon the text of natural history. Of these three I 
cannot report any as deficient. In what truth or per- 
fection they are handled, I make not now any judge- . 
ment; but they are parts of knowledge not deserted by 
the labour of man. 
5. For metaphysic, we have assigned unto it the in- 
quiry of formal and final causes; which assignation, as 
to the former of them, may seem to be nugatory and 
void, because of the received and inveterate opinion, 
that the inquisition of man is not competent to find out 
essential forms or true differences: of which opinion we 
will take this hold, that the invention of forms is of all 
other parts of knowledge the worthiest to be sought, if it 
be possible to be found. As for the possibility, they are 
ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can 
see nothing but sea. But it is manifest that Plato, in his 
opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation 
situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the 
true olject of knowledge; but lost the real fruit of his 
opinion, by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted 
from matter, and not confined and determined by matter; 
and so turning his opinion upon theology, wherewith all 
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