APHORISMS 



ON THE FORMATION OF THE FIRST HISTORY. 



APHORISMS. 



I. NATURE is placed in three situations, and subject to a 

 threefold government. For she is either free, and left to 

 unfold herself in a regular course, or she is driven from her 

 position by the obstinacy and resistance of matter, and the 

 violence of obstacles, or she is constrained and moulded by 

 human art and labour. The first state applies to the spe 

 cific nature of bodies ; the second to monsters ; the third 

 to artificial productions, in which she submits to the yoke 

 imposed on her by man, for without the hand of man they 

 would not have been produced. But from the labour and 

 contrivance of man an entirely new appearance of bodies 

 takes its rise, forming, as it were, another universe or the 

 atre. Natural history then is threefold, and treats either 

 of the liberty, the wanderings, or the fetters of nature ; so 

 that we may aptly divide it into the histories of generation, 

 praeter-generation, and arts; the latter of which divisions 

 we are also wont to call mechanic or experimental. Yet 

 would we not direct these three to be carried on separately, 

 for why should not the history of monstrosities in every 

 species be combined with that of the species itself? So 

 also artificial subjects may sometimes properly enough be 

 treated of together with certain natural species, though, at 

 other times, it is better to separate them. Circumstances, 

 therefore, must guide us, for too rigid a method admits of 

 repetitions and prolixity as much as no method. 



ii. Natural history being, as we have observed, threefold, 

 relative to its subject, is twofold in its application. For it 

 is employed either as a means of arriving at the knowledge 

 of the matters themselves, which are consigned to it, or as 

 the elementary material for philosophy, and as the stock or 

 forest, as it were, from which to furnish forth genuine in^ 



