88 APHORISMS. 



He who knows the causes of any nature in some subjects 

 only, knows the efficient or materiate cause, which causes 

 are inconstant, and nothing else but vehicles and causes 

 conveying form. But he who comprehends the unity of 

 nature in the most dissimilar substances, knows the form 

 of things. 



He who knows the efficient and materiate causes, com 

 poses or divides things previously invented, or transfers 

 and produces them ; also in matter somewhat similar, he 

 attaineth unto new inventions; the more deeply fixed limits 

 of things he moveth not. 



He who knows the forms, discloses and educes things 

 which have not hitherto been done, such as neither the 

 vicissitudes of nature, nor the diligence of experience might 

 ever have brought into action, or as might not have entered 

 into man s thoughts. 



The same is the way and the perfection of truth and of 

 power : this, namely, to discover the forms of things, from 

 the knowledge of which followeth true contemplation and 

 free operation. 



The discovery of forms which proceeds by the exclusion 

 or rejection of natures is simple arid one. For all natures, 

 which are absent in a given present nature, or present in a 

 given absent nature, pertain not to form ; and, after com 

 plete rejection or negation, the form and affirmation remains. 

 If you inquire, for example, into the form of heat, and find 

 water hot, yet not lucid, reject light: if you find air thin, 

 yet not hot, reject tenuity. This is short to say, but it is 

 reached by a long circuit. 



The contemplative and the operative utterance of words 

 differ not in reality. For when you say, light belongs not 

 to the form of heat, it is the same as if you were to say, in 

 producing heat it is not necessary to produce light also. 

 (The rest were not finished.) 



Nor do these proceed under our authority. Thou, O Fa 

 ther, turning to the works which thy hands made, saw that 

 all things were very good ; but man, turning to the works 

 which his hands made, saw that all was vanity and vexa 

 tion of spirit. Therefore, if we have laboured amid thy 

 works, thou wilt make us partakers of thy gratulation and 

 of thy sabbath. We humbly entreat that this disposition 

 may abide in us; and that by our hands the human family 

 may be endowed with new alms from thee. These we com 

 mend to thy eternal love, through our Jesus, thy Christ, 

 God with us. J. A. C. 



