IV LIFE OF BACON. 



year, he was meditating upon the laws of the imagina 

 tion.^) 

 1573. At the early age of thirteen, it was resolved to send him 



H&- 13 : to Cambridge, of which university, he, with his brother 



The uni 



versity. Anthony, was matriculated as a member, on the 10th of 



inquisition of sounds diligently ; both because sound is one of the most 

 hidden portions of nature, and because it is a virtue which may be called 

 incorporeal and immateriate, whereof there be in nature but few.&quot; 



As one of the facts, he says in his Sylva Sylvarum, (Art. 140.) &quot;There 

 is in St. James s fields a conduit of brick, unto which joineth a low vault ; 

 and at the end of that a round house of stone ; and in the brick conduit 

 there is a window; and in the round house a slit or rift of some little 

 breadth : if you cry out in the rift, it will make a fearful roaring at the win 

 dow. The cause is, for that all concaves, that proceed from more narrow 

 to more broad, do amplify the sound at the coming out/ 



() In the tenth century of the Sylva, after having enumerated many of 

 the idle imaginations by which the world then was, and, more or less, always 

 will be, misled, he says, &quot;With these vast and bottomless follies men have 

 been in part entertained. But we, that hold firm to the works of God. and 

 to the sense, which is God s lamp, lucerna Dei spiraculum hominis, will 

 inquire with all sobriety and severity, whether there be to be found in the 

 footsteps of nature, any such transmission and influx of immateriate virtues ; 

 and what the force of imagination is, either upon the body imaginant, or 

 upon another body. 



He then proceeds to state the different kinds of the power of imagination, 

 saying it is in three kinds : the first, upon the body of the imaginant, in 

 cluding likewise the child in the mother s womb ; the second is, the power 

 of it upon dead bodies, as plants, wood, stone, metal, &c. ; the third is, the 

 power of it upon the spirits of men and living creatures ; and with this 

 last we will only meddle. 



The problem therefore is, whether a man constantly and strongly be 

 lieving that such a thing shall be ; as that such a one will love him ; or 

 that such a one will grant him his request ; or that such a one shall recover 

 a sickness, or the like, it doth help any thing to the effecting of the thing 

 itself. 



In the solution of this problem he, according to his custom, enumerates 

 a variety of instances, and, amongst others, the following fact, which oc 

 curred to him when a child, for he left his father s house when lie was 

 thirteen. 



For example, he says, I related one time to a man, that was curious and 



