96 BACON 



form of whiteness, since air intermixed with powdered glass or 

 crystal is also judged to produce whiteness no less than when 

 mixed with water: this, therefore, is only the efficient cause, 

 and no other than the vehicle of the form. But if the inquiry 

 be made in metaphysics, it will be found that two transparent 

 bodies, intermixed in their optical portions, and in a simple 

 order, make whiteness. This part of metaphysics I find de- 

 fective; and no wonder; because in the method of inquiry 

 hitherto used, the forms of things can never appear. The mis- 

 fortune lies here, that men have accustomed themselves to hurry 

 away, and abstract their thoughts too hastily, and carry them 

 too remote from experience and particulars, and have given 

 themselves wholly up to their own meditations and arguments. 

 The use of this part of metaphysics is recommended by two 

 principal things : first, as it is the office and excellence of all 

 sciences to shorten the long turnings and windings of experi- 

 ence, so as to remove the ancient complaint of the scantiness of 

 life, and the tediousness of art ; g this is best performed by col- 

 lecting and uniting the axioms of the sciences into more gen- 

 eral ones, that shall suit the matter of all individuals. For the 

 sciences are like pyramids, erected upon the single basis of his- 

 tory and experience, and therefore a history of nature is, i. the 

 basis of natural philosophy; and 2. the first stage from the 

 basis is physics ; and 3. that nearest the vertex metaphysics ; 

 but 4. for the vertex itself, "the work which God worketh from 

 the beginning to the end," h or the summary law of nature, we 

 doubt whether human inquiry can reach it. But for the other 

 three, they are the true stages of the sciences, and are used by 

 those men who are inflated by their own knowledge, and a dar- 

 ing insolence, as the three hills of the giants to invade heaven. 



"Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam 

 Scilicet, atque Ossse frondosum involvere Olympum." Virgil.i 



But to the humble and the meek they are the three acclama- 

 tions, Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus ; for God is holy in the multi- 

 tude of his works, as well as in their order and union,fc and there- 

 fore the speculation was excellent in Parmenides and Plato, that 

 all things by defined gradations ascend to unity.* And as that 

 science is the most excellent, which least burdens the under- 

 standing by its multiplicity; this property is found in meta- 

 physics, as it contemplates those simple forms of things, den- 



