ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 151 



tion between terrestrial and celestial things, and well under 

 stands the more general appetites and passions of matter, 11 

 which are powerful in both, may receive a clear information 

 of what happens above from that which happens below; and 

 from what passes in the heavens, he may become acquainted 

 with some inferior motions hitherto undiscovered, not as 

 these are governed by those, but as they both have the 

 same common passions. We, therefore, report this physi 

 cal part of astronomy as wanting, in comparison of which 

 the present animated astronomy is but as the stuffed ox of 

 Prometheus aping the form but wanting the substance. 



But for astrology, it is so full of superstition, that scarce 

 anything sound can be discovered in it; though we judge 

 it should rather be purged than absolutely rejected. But 

 if any one shall pretend that this science is founded, not 

 in reason and physical contemplations, but in the direct 

 experience and observation of past ages, and therefore not 

 to be examined by physical reasons, as the Chaldeans 

 boasted, he may at the same time bring back divination, 

 auguries, soothsaying, and give in to all kinds of fables; 

 for these also were said to descend from long experience. 



such demonstrations, however, astronomy could no more be regarded as a 

 branch of mathematics than commerce or politics, because they sometimes call 

 in the aid of arithmetic ; and if Bacon had followed out this strange notion, he 

 must have made, with lamblicus, numbers the parent of all knowledge, as there 

 is no department of science advanced beyond mere empiricism which does not 

 rest upon the basis of figures. The degradation which Bacon imputes to astron 

 omy from its association with mathematics shows that the most acute minds are 

 no more privileged than the weakest to decide questions in relation to things of 

 which they are perfectly ignorant. It is needless to say that a science only 

 advances beyond empiricism to those intermediate or general axioms which 

 Bacon so ardently desired to reach, so far as its phenomena admit of being ex 

 tended and corrected by mathematical forms, and that it was only through such 

 agencies that astronomy, almost in the space of a single age, was transformed 

 from a mere empiric colligation of facts into the highest of the deductive sci 

 ences. The confusion arose from the consequence of Bacon s fundamental 

 division of the sciences, which confounded those which are purely formal with 

 the substantive sciences of which they are in some measure a universal condi 

 tion, and hindered Bacon from seizing with precision upon the functions ani 

 limits of these sciences, and comprehending the important part the mathe 

 matical portion of them perform, in extending and corroborating physical 

 discovery. Ed. 



11 Tendencies, forces, efforts, and effects. Ed. 



