NOVUM ORGANUM 41 



since every violent motion is also in fact natural, that is to 

 say, the external efficient puts nature in action in a different 

 manner to that which she had previously employed. 



But if, neglecting these, any one were, for instance, to 

 observe that there is in bodies a tendency of adhesion, so as 

 not to suffer the unity of nature to be completely separated 

 or broken, and a vacuum? 9 to be formed, or that they have a 

 tendency to return to their natural dimensions or tension, so 

 that, if compressed or extended within or beyond it, they 

 immediately strive to recover themselves, and resume their 

 former volume and extent; or that they have a tendency to 

 congregate into masses with similar bodies the dense, for 

 instance, toward the circumference of the earth, the thin 

 and rare toward that of the heavens. These and the like 

 are true physical genera of motions, but the others are 

 clearly logical and scholastic, as appears plainly from a 

 comparison of the two. 



Another considerable evil is, that men in their systems 

 and contemplations bestow their labor upon the investiga 

 tion and discussion of the principles of things and the ex 

 treme limits of nature, although all utility and means of 

 action consist in the intermediate objects. Hence men 

 cease not to abstract nature till they arrive at potential and 

 shapeless matter, 30 and still persist in their dissection, till 



89 Galileo had recently adopted the notion that nature abhorred a vacuum 

 for an axiomatic principle, and it was not till Torricelli, his disciple, had given 

 practical proof of the utility of Bacon s method, by the discovery of the barom 

 eter (1643) that this error, as also that expressed below, and believed by Bacon, 

 concerning the homoeopathic tendencies of bodies, was destroyed. Ed. 



30 Donee ad materiam poteniialem et informem ventum fuerit. Nearly all 

 the ancient philosophers admitted the existence of a certain primitive and 

 Bhapeless matter as the substratum of things which the creative power had 

 reduced to fixed proportions, and resolved into specific substances. The ex- 



