118 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



will arrive when we come to treat of the latent process, and 

 latent conformation, and the discovery of them as they exist 

 in what are called substances, or concrete natures. 



Nor again would we be thought to mean (even when 

 treating of simple natures) any abstract forms or ideas, 

 either undefined or badly defined 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, reject rarity, or rarity 

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

 say, &quot; Man can superinduce heat on a dense body,&quot; or the 

 reverse, &quot; Man can abstract or ward off heat from a rare 

 body.&quot; 



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 appears 

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

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

 bow, or the radiation of opal or the diamond ;* death by 

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

 consumption ; and yet they all agree in the common natures 

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

 understanding is enthralled 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 

 course of nature, and expanded and exalted to new efficients 

 and new modes of operation, except by the revelation and 

 invention of forms of this nature. But after f this union of 

 nature, which is the principal point, we will afterwards, in 

 its proper place, treat of the divisions and ramifications of 

 nature, whether ordinary or internal and more real. 



18. We must now offer an example of the exclusion or 



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

 of the decomposition of colours. 



t i. e. the common link or form which connects the various kinds of natures, 

 such as the different hot or red natures enumerated above. See Aphorism 3, 

 Part 2. 



