474 NOVUM ORGANUM. [BOOK It 



mere theories and ill-defined notions, with axioms requiring 

 daily correction. These will, doubtless, be better or worse, 

 according to the power and strength of the understanding which 

 creates them. But it is only for God (the bestower and creator 

 of forms), and perhaps for angels and intelligences, at once to 

 recognise forms affirmatively at the first glance of contemplation: 

 man, at least, is unable to do so, and is only allowed to proceed 

 first by negatives, and then to conclude with affirmatives, after 

 every species of exclusion. 



XVI. We must, therefore, effect a complete solution and 

 reparation of nature; not bv fire, but by the mind, that divine 

 fire. The first work of legitimate induction, in the discovery of 

 forms, is rejection, or the exclusive instances of individual 

 natures, which are not found in some one instance where the 

 given nature is present, or are found in any one instance where 

 it is absent, or are found to increase in any one instance where 

 the given nature decreases, or the reverse. After an exclusion 

 correctly effected, an affirmative form will remain as the residuum, 

 solid, true, and well defined, whilst all volatile opinions go off in 

 smoke. This is readily said ; but we must arrive at it by a cir 

 cuitous rout. We shall perhaps, however, omit nothing that 

 can facilitate our progress. 



XVII. Tlie first and almost perpetual precaution and warning 

 which \ve consider necessary is this ; that none should suppose 

 from the great part assigned by us to forms, that we mean such 

 forms as the meditations and thoughts of men have hithe-to been 

 accustomed to. In the first place, we do not at present mean 

 the concrete forms, which (as we have observed) are in the com 

 mon course of things compounded of simple natures, as those of 

 a lion, an eagle, a rose, gold, or the like. The moment for dis 

 cussing these will arrive when we come to treat of the latent 

 process and latent conformation, and the discovery of them 

 as they exist in what are called substances, or concrete natures. 



Nor again, would we be thought to mean (even when treating 

 of simple natures) any abstract forms or ideas, either undefined 

 or badly defined in matter. For when we speak of forms, we 

 mean nothing else than those laws and regulations of simple 

 action which arrange and constitute any simple nature, such as 

 heat, light, weight, in every species of matter, and in a suscep 

 tible subject. The form of heat or form of light, therefore, 

 means no more than the law of heat or the law of light. Nor 

 do we ever abstract or withdraw ourselves from things, and the 

 operative branch of philosophy. When, therefore, we say (for 

 instance) in our investigation of the form of heat, Heject rarity, 

 or, llarity is not of the form of heat, it is the same as if we 

 were to say Man can superinduce heat on a dense body, 01 



