6 CORRELATION OF PHYSICAL FORCES. 



scholastic name of ' forms ' a term derived from the ancient 

 philosophy, but differently applied. He appears to have un- 

 derstood by 'form' the essence of quality that in which, 

 abstracting everything extraneous, a given quality consists, or 

 that which, superinduced on any body, would give it its 

 peculiar quality : thus, the form of transparency is that which 

 constitutes transparency, or that by which, when discovered, 

 transparency could be produced or superinduced. To take a 

 specific example of what I may term the synthetic applica- 

 tion of his philosophy : ' In gold there meet together yellow- 

 ness, gravity, malleability, fixedness in the fire, a determinate 

 way of solution, which are the simple natures in gold ; for he 

 who understands form, and the manner of superinducing this 

 yellowness, gravity, ductility, fixedness, faculty of fusion, 

 solution, &c., with their particular degrees and proportions, 

 will consider how to join them together in some body, so that 

 a transmutation into gold shall follow.' 



On the other hand, the analytic method, or, ' the enquiry 

 from what origin gold or any other metal or stone is gene- 

 rated from its first fluid matter or rudiments, up to a perfect 

 mineral,' is to be perceived by what Bacon calls the latent 

 process, or a search for ' what in every generation or trans- 

 formation of bodies, flies off, what remains behind, what 

 is added, what separated, &c. ; also, in other alterations 

 and motions, what gives motion, what governs it, and the like.' 

 Bacon appears to have thought that qualities separate from 

 the substances themselves were attainable, and if not capable 

 of physical isolation, were at all events capable of physical 

 transference and superinduction. 



Subsequently to Bacon a belief has generally existed, and 

 now to a great extent exists, in what are called secondary 

 causes, or consequential steps, wherein one phenomenon is 

 supposed necessarily to hang on another, and that on another, 

 until at last we arrive at an essential cause, subject immedi- 

 ately to the First Cause. This [notion is generally prevalent 

 both on the Continent and in this country : nothing is more 

 familiar than the expression ' study the effects in order to 

 arrive at the causes.' 



Instead of regarding the proper object of physical science 



