138 ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. [BOOK III 



Severinus into a body and harmony of philosophy ; or of 

 Telcsius, who, in restoring the philosophy of Parmenides, has 

 turned their own weapons against the Peripatetics ; or of 

 Gilbert, who revived the doctrines of Fhilolaus ; or of any 

 other, provided he be worthy. But as there are whole 

 volumes of these authors extant, we would only have the 

 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 lias prevailed, as if the essential 

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

 coverable by human 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 in 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 ; &amp;gt;( i though he lost the advantage of this just 

 opinion by contemplating and grasping at forms totally 

 abstracted from matter, and not as determined in it ; r whence 

 he turned aside to theological speculations, and therewith 

 infected all his natural philosophy. 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 crea 

 tures, 8 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 have 

 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 transpositions 



i In the Timgcus, passim, et Eep. x. init. Cf. Hooker, i. 3, 4 ; com 

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



r As Mr. Boyle has excellently shown, by a large induction of experi 

 ments and crucial instances, wherewith most of his physical inquiries 

 we enriched. 



As plants, animals, minerals ; the elements fire, air, water, earth, &a 



