78 BACON 



wicked and desperately impious persons do not corrupt society 

 so much as they who blend with their vices a mixture of virtue. 

 What tends to preserve the effects of the greatest laws of nature, 

 displays the strongest action, is a rule in natural philosophy. 

 For the first and universal motion, that preserves the chain and 

 contexture of nature unbroken, and prevents a vacuum, as they 

 call it, or empty discontinuity in the world, controls the more 

 particular law which draws heavy bodies to the earth, and pre- 

 serves the region of gross and compacted natures. The same 

 rule is good in politics ; for those things which conduce to the 

 conservation of the entire commonwealth, control and modify 

 those made for the welfare of particular members of a govern- 

 ment. The same principle may be observed in theology ; for, 

 among the virtues of this class, charity is the most communi- 

 cative, and excels all the rest. The force of an agent is aug- 

 mented by the antiperistasis of the counteracting body/ is a rule 

 in civil states as in nature, for all faction is vehemently moved 

 and incensed at the rising of a contrary faction. 



A discord ending immediately in a concord sets off the har- 

 mony. This is a rule in music that holds also true in morals. 

 A trembling sound in music gives the same pleasure to the ear, 

 as the coruscation of water or the sparkling of a diamond to 

 the eye 



" splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus." Virgil.* 



The organs of the senses resemble the organs of reflection, as 

 we see in optics and acoustics, where a concave glass resembles 

 the eye, and a sounding cavity the ear. And of these axioms an 

 infinite number might be collected; and thus the celebrated 

 Persian magic was, in effect, no more than a notation of the 

 correspondence in the structure and fabric of things natural and 

 civil. Nor let any one understand all this of mere similitudes, 

 as they might at first appear, for they really are one and the 

 same footsteps, and impressions of nature, made upon different 

 matters and subjects. And in this light the thing has not 

 hitherto been carefully treated. A few of these axioms may 

 indeed be found in the writings of eminent men, here and there 

 interspersed occasionally ; but a collected body of them, which 

 should have a primitive and summary tendency to the sciences, 

 is not hitherto extant, though a thing of so great moment as 

 remarkable to show nature to be one and the same, which is 

 supposed the office of a primary philosophy. 



