92 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



natural philosophy, which is commonly made a principal part, 

 and holdeth rank with physic special and metaphysic, which is 

 mathematic ; but I think it more agreeable to the nature of 

 things and to the light of order, to place it as a branch of 

 metaphysic. For the subject of it being quantity, not quantity 

 indefinite, which is but a relative, and belongeth io philosophy 

 prima (as hath been said), but quantity determined or pro 

 portionable, it appeareth to be one of the essential forms of 

 things, as tbat that is causative in Nature of a number of 

 effects ; insomuch as we see in the schools both of Democritus 

 and of Pythagoras that the one did ascribe figure to the first 

 seeds of things, and the other did suppose numbers to be the 

 principles and originals of things. And it is true also that 

 of all other forms (as we understand forms) it is the most 

 abstracted and separable from matter, and therefore most 

 proper to metaphysic ; which hath likewise been the cause why 

 ft hath been better laboured and inquired than any of the 

 other forms, which are more immersed in matter. For it being 

 the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of 

 knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as 

 in a champaign region, and not in the inclosures of particularity, 

 the mathematics of all other knowledge were the goodliest 

 fields to satisfy that appetite. But for the placing of this 

 science, it is not much material : only we have endeavoured in 

 these our partitions to observe a kind of perspective, that one 

 part may cast light upon another. 



(2) The mathematics are either pure or mixed, lo the 

 pure mathematics are those sciences belonging which handle 

 quantity determinate, merely severed from any axioms of 

 natural philosophy ; and these are two, geometry and arith 

 metic, the one handling quantity continued, and the other 

 dissevered. Mixed hath for subject some axioms or parts of 

 natural philosophy, and considereth quantity determined, as 

 it is auxiliary and incident unto them. For many parts of 

 Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor 

 demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated 

 unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and inter 

 vening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, 

 music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and 

 divers others. In the mathematics I can report no deficience, 

 except it be that men do not sufficiently understand the 

 excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy 

 and curt najiy defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. 

 For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it ; if too wandering, 

 they fix it ; ii too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So 



