NOVUM ORG^NUM 89 



and their co-operation in forming natural bodies.* 8 Again, 

 when man reflects upon the entire liberty of nature, he meets 

 with particular species of things, as animals, plants, min 

 erals, and is thence easily led to imagine that there exist in 

 nature certain primary forms which she strives to produce, 

 and that all variation from them arises from some impedi 

 ment or error which she is exposed to in completing her 

 work, or from the collision or metamorphosis of different 

 species. The first hypothesis has produced the doctrine of 

 elementary properties, the second that of occult properties 

 and specific powers; and both lead to trifling courses of re 

 flection, in which the mind acquiesces, and is thus diverted 

 from more important subjects. But physicians exercise a 

 much more useful labor in the consideration of the second 

 ary qualities of things, and the operations of attraction, re 

 pulsion, attenuation, inspissation, dilatation, astringency, 

 separation, maturation, and the like; and would do still 

 more if they would not corrupt these proper observations 

 by the two systems I have alluded to, of elementary quali 

 ties and specific powers, by which they either reduce the 

 secondary to first qualities, and their subtile and immeas- 



28 In mechanics and the general sciences, causes compound their effects, or 

 in other words, it is generally possible to deduce a priori the consequence of 

 introducing complex agencies into any experiment, by allowing for the effect 

 of each of the simple causes which enter into their composition. In chemistry 

 and physiology a contrary law holds ; the causes which they embody generally 

 uniting to form distinct substances, and to introduce unforeseen laws and com 

 binations. The deductive method here is consequently inapplicable, and we are 

 forced back upon experiment. 



Bacon in the text is hardly consistent with himself, as he admits in the 

 second book the doctrine, to which modern discovery points, of the reciprocal 

 transmutation of the elements. What seemed poetic fiction in the theories of 

 Pythagoras and Seneca, assumes the appearance of scientific fact in the handa 

 of Baron Caynard. Ed. 



