276 PREFACE TO THE 



This application of Scripture certainly does not de 

 serve the indignation which Le Maistre, perhaps in 

 honest ignorance, has poured out upon it. 1 &quot; He as 

 serts the eternity of matter,&quot; is Le Maistre s commen 

 tary on the passage in which it occurs. Beyond doubt 

 he denies that hyle was created, but he also denies that 

 it exists ; treating it as the mere figment of the Aristo 

 telian philosophy. 



But although Le Maistre s remark is only a fair spe 

 cimen of his whole work, in which ignorance and pas 

 sion are so mixed together that it is hard to say how 

 much is to be ascribed to the one and how much to the 

 other, yet it cannot be denied that Bacon does not ap 

 pear to have understood Aristotle. So far from put 

 ting at the origin of things that which is potential, and 

 educing the actual from it, Aristotle asserts that any 

 system which does this is untenable ; and it is curious 

 that he refers particularly to the theogonists, 01 IK WKTOS 

 yewwvTcs, who engender realities out of night. 2 For 

 night and chaos may not unfitly be taken to represent 

 uninformed matter. 3 The doctrine of Aristotle being 

 in this as in other matters followed by the schoolmen, 

 it was a question with them how the words &quot; and the 

 earth was without form,&quot; which come immediately 

 after the declaration that in the beginning God cre 

 ated the heaven and the earth, ought to be under 

 stood. For to create the earth is to give it actual 

 existence ; how then can it be without form ? To 

 this the most satisfactory answer was that the words 

 without form do not imply the absence of substantial 



1 Examen de la Philosophic de Bacon, ii. p. 143. 



2 Arist. Metaph. xii. 6. 



8 See Brandis s Sehol. in Aristot. p. 803., and for the remarks of Alex 

 ander Aphrodisiensis, Lobeck, Aglaoph. i. 488. 



