BOOK II.] APHORISMS. 455 



uberant, or meagre and scarce, fine or coarse, aeriform or 

 ignifbrm, active or sluggish, weak or robust, progressive or 

 retrograde, abrupt or continuous, agreeing with, external and 

 surrounding objects, or differing from them, &c. In like manner 

 must we treat tangible essence (which admits of as many dis 

 tinctions as the spirit), and its hairs, fibres, and varied textupo. 

 Again, the situation of the spirit in the corporeal mass, its pores, 

 passages, veins, and cells, and the rudiments or first essays of 

 the organic body, are subject to the same examination. In these, 

 however, as in our former inquiries, and therefore in the whole 

 investigation of latent conformation, the only genuine and clear 

 light which completely dispels all darkness and subtile diilicultics, 

 is admitted by means of the primary axioms. 



VIII. This method will not bring us to atoms,* which takes 

 for granted the vacuum, and immutability of matter (neither of 

 which hypotheses is correct), but to the real particles such as we 

 discover them to be. Nor is there any ground for alarm at this 

 refinement as if it were inexplicable, for, on the contrary, the 

 more inquiry is directed to simple natures, the more will every 

 thing be placed in a plain and perspicuous light, since we transfer 

 our attention from the complicated to the simple, from the in 

 commensurable to the commensurable, from surds to rational 

 quantities, from the indefinite and vague to the definite and 

 certain ; as when we arrive at the elements of letters, and the 

 simple tones of concords. The investigation of nature is best 

 conducted when mathematics are applied to physics. Again, let 

 none be alarmed at vast numbers and fractions, for in calculation 

 it is as easy to set down or to reflect upon a thousand as 

 an unit, or the thousandth part of an integer as an integer 

 itself. 



IX. 1 From the two kinds of axioms above specified, arise the 



We sometimes adopt the same mode of expression, as in the words 

 spirits of nitre, spirits of wine. Some such agency has been assumed by 

 nearly all the modern physicists, a few of whom, along with Bacon, 

 would leave ua to gather from their expressions, that they believe such 

 bodies endowed with the sentient powers of perception. As another 

 specimen of his sentiment on this subject, we may refer to a paragraph 

 on the decomposition of compmnds, in his essay on death, beginning 

 &quot; The spirit which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due 

 subjection ; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts 

 unite.&quot; Ed. 



k The theory of the Epicureans and others. The atoms are supposed 

 to be invisible, inalterable particles, endued with all the properties of 

 the given body, and forming that body by their union. They must be 

 separated, ot course, which either takes a vacuum for granted, or intro 

 duces a tertium quid into the composition of the body. 



1 Compare the three following aphorisms with the three last chapterf 

 of tke third book of the &quot; Do Augment:? Scientiarum.&quot; 



