202 NOVUM ORGANUM. 



countries, increased by the reflection of mountains and 

 walls. For this degree of heat and cold can be borne for 

 a short period only by animals, yet it is nothing compared 

 with the heat of a burning furnace, or the corresponding 

 degree of cold.* Every thing with us has a tendency to 

 become rarefied, dry, and wasted, and nothing to become 

 condensed or soft, except by mixtures, and, as it were, 

 spurious methods. Instances of cold, therefore, should be 

 searched for most diligently, such as may be found by expos 

 ing bodies upon buildings in a hard frost, in subterraneous 

 caverns, by surrounding bodies with snow and ice in deep 

 places excavated for that purpose, by letting bodies down 

 into wells, by burying bodies in quicksilver and metals, by 

 immersing them in streams which petrify wood, by burying 

 them in the earth (which the Chinese are reported to do 

 with their china, masses of which, made for that purpose, 

 are said to remain in the ground for forty or fifty years, 

 and to be transmitted to their heirs as a sort of artificial 

 mine), and the like. The condensations which take place 

 in nature by means of cold should also be investigated, 

 that by learning their causes they may be introduced into 

 the arts ; such as are observed in the exudation of marble 

 and stones, in the dew upon the panes of glass in a room 

 towards morning after a frosty night, in the formation and 

 the gathering of vapours under the earth into water, whence 

 spring fountains, and the like. 



Besides the substances which are cold to the touch, there 

 are others which have also the effect of cold, and condense ; 

 they appear, however, to act only upon the bodies of ani 

 mals, and scarcely any further. Of these we have many 

 instances, in medicines and plasters. Some condense the 

 flesh and tangible parts, such as astringent and inspissating 

 medicines, others the spirits, such as soporifics. There are 

 two modes of condensing the spirits, by soporifics or pro 

 vocatives to sleep ; the one by calming the motion, the 

 other by expelling the spirit. The violet, dried roses, let 

 tuces, and other benign or mild remedies, by their friendly 

 and gently cooling vapours, invite the spirits to unite, and 



* It is impossible to compare a degree of heat with a degree of cold, without 

 the assumption of some arbitrary test, to which the degrees are to be referred. 

 In the next sentence Bacon appears to have taken the power of animal life to 

 support heat or cold as the test, and then the comparison can only be between 

 the degree of heat or of cold that will produce death. 



The zero must be arbitrary which divides equally a certain degree of heat 

 from a certain degree of cold. 



