ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 205 



and that ceremonies do raise and strengthen it; allowing also, 

 that ceremonies may be sincerely used to that end, as a 

 physical remedy, without the least design of thereby pro 

 curing the assistance of spirits; yet ought they still to be 

 held unlawful, because they oppose and contradict that Di 

 vine sentence passed upon man for sin: &quot;In the sweat of 

 thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread.&quot; For this kind of magic 

 offers those excellent fruits which God had ordained should 

 be procured by labor at the price of a few easy and slight 

 observances. 



There are two other doctrines which principally regard 

 the faculties of the inferior or sensitive soul, as chiefly com 

 municating with the organs of the body the one is of vol 

 untary motion, the other of sense and sensibility. The 

 former has been but superficially inquired into, and one 

 entire part of it is almost wholly neglected. The office 

 and proper structure of the nerves, muscles, etc., requisite 

 to muscular motion, what parts of the body rest while 

 others move, and how the imagination acts as director of 

 this motion, so far than when it drops the image whereto 

 the motion tended, the motion itself presently ceases as in 

 walking, if another serious thought come across our mind, 

 we presently stand still; with many other such subtilties 

 have long ago been observed and scrutinized. But how 

 the compressions, dilatations, and agitations of the spirit, 

 which, doubtless, is the spring of motion, should guide 

 and rule the corporeal and gross mass of the parts, has not 

 yet been diligently searched into and treated. And no 

 wonder, since the sensitive soul itself has been hitherto 

 taken for a principle of motion and a function, rather than 

 a substance. 7 But as it is now known to be material, it be- 



1 The original is, pro entekchia et functions quadam, alluding to the techni 

 cal term entelechy, which Aristotle introduced into his Physics (iii. 1) to denote 

 the act through which any substance exercises its power. The rational soul 

 was never taken in the sense of a simple act, or entelechy, as Bacon would 

 insinuate, but was affirmed even by Aristotle, who introduced the phrase, to 

 be a certain power apart and distinguished from the rest of the human system, 

 as the eternal is distinguishable from the incorruptible. His words are : 



