162 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



result drawn out and joined to the rest. And so much for 

 physics and its appendages. 



To metaphysics we assign the inquiry of formal and final 



causes. But an opinion has prevailed, as if the essential 



forms, or real differences of things, were absolutely undis- 



coverable by liuman means; granting, at the same time, 



that if they could be discovered, this, of all the parts of 



knowledge, would be the most worthy of inquiry. As to 



the possibility of the thing, there are indolent discoverers, 



who see nothing but sea and sky, absolutely deny there can 



be any land beyond them. But it is manifest that Plato, 



a man of a sublime genius, who took a view of everything 



[ as from a high rock, saw in his doctrine of ideas, that forms 



were the true object of knowledge&quot;; 16 though he lost the 



advantage of this just opinion by contemplating and grasp- 



fing at forms totally abstracted from matter, and not as 



determined in it;&quot; whence he turned aside to theological 



speculations, and therewith infected all his natural philoso- 



i phy. But if with diligence, seriousness, and sincerity, we 



/ turn our eyes to action and use, we may find, and become 



| acquainted with those forms, the knowledge whereof will 



wonderfully enrich and prosper human affairs. 



The forms of substances, indeed, viz., the species of 

 creatures, 18 are so complicated and interwoven, that the 

 inquiry into them is either vain, or should be laid aside for 

 a time, and resumed after the forms of a more simple nature 

 iiave been duly sifted and discovered. For as it were neither 

 easy nor useful to discover the form of a sound that shall 

 make a word, since words, by the composition and trans 

 positions of letters are infinite; but practicable, easy, and 

 useful to discover the form of a sound expressing a single 

 letter, or by what collision or application of the organs of 



16 In the Timseus, passim, et Rep. x. init. Of. Hooker, i. 3, 4; compare 

 also Hallam s Literature of Europe, part iii. c. 3, p. 402. 



17 As Mr. Boyle has excellently shown, by a large induction of experiments 

 and crucial instances, wherewith most of his physical inquiries are enriched. 



18 As plants, animals, minerals ; the elements fire, air, water, earth, etc. 



