BOOK II.] APHORISMS. 475 



the reverse, Man can abstract or ward off heat from a rare 

 body. 



But if our forms appear to any one tc be somewhat abstracted, 

 from their mingling and uniting heterogeneous objects (the 

 heat for instance of the heavenly bodies appears to be very dif 

 ferent from that of fire ; the fixed red of the rose and the like, 

 from that which is apparent in the rainbow, or the radiation of 

 opal or the diamond ; h death by drowning, from that by burning, 

 the sword, apoplexy, or consumption ; and yet they all agree in 

 the common natures of heat, redness, and death), let him be 

 assured that his understanding is enthralled by habit, by general 

 appearances and hypotheses. For it is most certain that, how- 

 ever heterogeneous and distinct, they agree in the form or law 

 which regulates heat, redness, or death ; and that human power 

 cannot be emancipated and freed from the common course of 

 nature, and expanded and exalted to new efficients and new 

 modes of operation, except by the revelation and invention of 

 forms of this nature. But after this union of nature, which is 

 the principal point, we will afterwards, in its proper place, treat 

 of the divisions and ramifications of nature, whether ordinary or 

 internal and more real. 



XVIII. We must now offer an example of the exclusion or 

 rejection of natures found by the tables of review, not to be of 

 the form of heat ; first premising that not only each table is 

 sufficient for the rejection of any nature, but even each single 

 instance contained in them. For it is clear from what has been 

 said that every contradictory instance destroys an hypothesis as 

 to the form. Still, however, for the sake of clearness, and in 

 order to show more plainly the use of the tables, we redouble or 

 repeat the exclusive. 



An Example of the Exclusive Table, or of ike Rejection of Natures from 

 the Form of Heat. 



1. On account of the sun s rays, reject elementary (or terres 

 trial) nature. 



2. On account of common fire, and particularly subterranean 

 fires (which are the most remote and secluded from the rays of 

 the heavenly bodies), reject celestial nature. 



3. On account of the heat acquired by every description of 

 substances (as minerals, vegetables, the external parts of animals, 



&quot; This general law or form has been well illustrated by Newton s 

 discovery of the decomposition of colours. 



1 I. e. the common link or form which connects the various kinds 

 of natures, such as the difierent hot or red natures enumerated abovu 

 Sea Aphorism iii. part 2 



