ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 99 



came universally ridiculous. So far are physical causes from 

 drawing men off from God and Providence, that, on the con- 

 trary, the philosophers employed in discovering them can find 

 no rest, but by flying to God or Providence at last. 



CHAPTER V 



Division of the Practical Branch of Natural Philosophy into Mechanics 

 and Magic (Experimental Philosophy), which correspond to the 

 Speculative Division Mechanics to Physics, and Magic to Meta- 

 physics. The word Magic cleared from False Interpretation. Ap- 

 pendix to Active Science twofold; viz., an Inventory of Human 

 Helps and a Catalogue of Things of Multifarious Use 



The practical doctrine of nature we likewise necessarily divide 

 into two parts, corresponding to those of speculative ; for phys- 

 ics, or the inquiry of efficient and material causes, produces 

 mechanics; and metaphysics, the inquiry of forms, produces 

 magic ; whilst the inquiry of final causes is a barren thing, or 

 as a virgin consecrated to God. We here understand that me- 

 chanics which is coupled with physical causes ; for besides the 

 bare effective or empirical mechanics, which has no dependence 

 on physics, and belongs to natural history, there is another not 

 absolutely operative, and yet not strictly philosophical. For 

 all discoveries of works either had their rise from accident, and 

 so were handed down from age to age, or else were sought by 

 design ; and the latter were either discovered by the light of 

 causes and axioms, or acquired by extending, transferring, or 

 compounding some former inventions, which is a thing more 

 ingenious and sagacious than philosophical. But the mechan- 

 ics here understood is that treated by Aristotle promiscuously, 

 by Hero in his Pneumatics, by that very diligent writer in me- 

 tallics, George Agricola, and by numerous others in particular 

 subjects ; so that we have no omission to note in this point, only 

 that the miscellaneous mechanics, after the example of Aris- 

 totle, should have been more carefully continued by the mod- 

 erns, especially with regard to such contrivances whose causes 

 are more obscure, or their effects more noble ; whereas the 

 writers upon these subjects hitherto have only coasted along the 

 shore " premendo littus iniquum." a And it appears to us 

 that scarce anything in nature can be fundamentally discovered, 

 either by accident, experimental attempts, or the light of phys- 



