ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 157 



the receiving the benign action of the stars upon seals and 

 signets of gems or metal suited to the purpose, so as to 

 detain and fix, as it were, the felicity of that hour which 

 would otherwise be volatile and fugitive. The poet pas 

 sionately complains of a similar art among the ancients 

 long since buried in oblivion 



&quot;Annulus infuso non vivit mirus Olympo, 

 Non magis ingentea humili sub lumine Phoebos, 

 Fert gemma, aut celso divulsas cardine lunas.&quot; 



Indeed the Eoman Church has upheld the venerableness of 

 saints relics and their virtues, since the flux of time has 

 no power to abate the force and efficacy of spiritual things; 

 but to assert that the relics of persons might be so deter 

 mined as to continue and perpetuate the virtue of an hour 

 which is past, and as it were dead, is mere superstition and 

 imposture. 



Abstract physics may be justly divided into two parts 

 the doctrine of the schemes of matter, and the doctrine of 

 appetites and motions. The schemes of matter are density, 

 rarity, gravity, levity, heat, cold, tangibility, intangibility, 

 volatile, fixed, determinate, fluid, humid, dry, unctuous, 

 crude, hard, soft, fragile, tensile, porous, united, spiri 

 tuous, jejune, simple, compound, absolute, imperfectly 

 mixed, fibrous and veiny, simple position, or equable, 

 similar, dissimilar, specificate, unspecificate, organical, in- 

 organical, animate and inanimate ; and further than this we 

 proceed not. For sensible and insensible, rational and ir 

 rational, we refer to the doctrine of man. 



Appetites and motions are of two kinds as being either 

 simple motions, wherein the spring of all natural actions is 

 contained, that is, in respect of their schemes of matter; or 

 motions compounded or produced, and with these the com 

 mon philosophy, which enters but little into the body of 

 nature, begins. But these compound motions, such as gen 

 eration, corruption, etc., should be esteemed certain results 

 or effects of simple motions, rather than primitive motions 



