Ss lihas  n tai ad oi . 
Fey Via ’ 
VII. 5.] _ THE SECOND BOOK. 117 
inte 
water is the cause, it is well rendered; but nevertheless 
is this the form of whiteness? No; but it is the efficient, 
which is ever but vehiculum forme. ‘This 
part of metaphysic I do not find laboured Méaphysica 
and performed: whereat I marvel not: be- a va 
cause I hold it not possible to be invented gy. rerum. 
by that course of invention which hath been 
used ; in regard that men (which is the root of all error) 
have made too untimely a departure and too remote a 
recess from particulars. 
6. But the use of this part of metaphysic, which I re- ~ 
port as deficient, is of the rest the most excellent in two 
respects: the one, because it is the duty and virtue of all 
knowledge to abridge the infinity of individual experience, 
as much as the conception of truth will permit, and to 
remedy the complaint of w/a brevis, ars longa; which is 
performed by uniting the notions and conceptions of 
sciences. For knowledges areas pyramides, whereof 
history is the basis. So of natural philosophy, the basis is 
natural history; the stage next the basis is physic; the 
stage next the vertical point is metaphysic. As for the 
vertical point, opus quod operatur Deus & principio usque ad~ 
jfinem, the summary law of nature, we know not whether 
man’s inquiry can attain unto it. But these three be -the 
true stages of knowledge, and are to them that are de- 
praved no better than the giants’ hills : 
Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam, 
Scilicet, atque Osse frondosum involvere Olympum. 
But to those which refer all things to the glory of God, 
they are as the three acclamations, Sancte, sancte, sancte ! 
holy in the description or dilatation of his works; holy 
in the connexion or concatenation of them; and holy in, , 
