VII. 4-] THE SECOND BOOK. 115 



respect nature united or collected, the third contemplateth 

 nature diffused or distributed. Nature is collected either 

 into one entire total, or else into the same principles or 

 seeds. So as the first doctrine is touching the contexture 

 or configuration of things, as de mundo, de universitate 

 rerum. The second is the doctrine concerning the prin 

 ciples or originals of things. The third is the doctrine 

 concerning all variety and particularity of things ; whether 

 it be of the differing substances, or their differing qualities 

 and natures ; whereof there needeth no enumeration, this 

 part being but as a gloss or paraphrase that attendeth 

 upon the text of natural history. Of these three I 

 cannot report any as deficient. In what truth or per 

 fection they are handled, I make not now any judge 

 ment; but they are parts of knowledge not deserted by 

 the labour of man. ^&amp;gt;^? * ^^ 



5. For metaphysic, we have assigned unto it the in 

 quiry of formal and final causes; which assignation, as 

 to the former of them, may seem to be nugatory, and 

 void, because of the received and inveterate opinion, 

 that the inquisition of man is not competent to find out 

 essential forms or true differences : of which opinion we 

 will take this hold, that the invention of forms is of all 

 other parts of knowledge the worthiest to be sought, if it- 

 be possible to be found. As for the possibility, they are 

 ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can 

 see nothing but sea. But it is manifest that Plato, in his 

 opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation 

 situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the 

 true object of knowledge ; but lost the real fruit of his 

 opinion, by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted 

 from matter, and not confined and determined by matter ; 

 and so turning his opinion upon theology, wherewith all 



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