NOVUM ORGANUM 373 



similar bodies by distillation, and other solutions, which shows 

 the dissimilarity of the compound by the union of the homo- 

 geneous parts. These methods are useful, and of importance to 

 our inquiry, although attended generally with fallacy : for many 

 natures are assigned and attributed to the separate bodies, as if 

 they had previously existed in the compound, which, in reality, 

 are recently bestowed and superinduced by fire and heat, and 

 the other modes of separation. Besides, it is, after all, but a 

 small part of the labor of discovering the real conformation in 

 the compound, which is so subtile and nice, that it is rather con- 

 fused and lost by the operation of the fire, than discovered and 

 brought to light. 



A separation and solution of bodies, therefore, is to be ef- 

 fected, not by fire indeed, but rather by reasoning and true in- 

 duction, with the assistance of experiment, and by a comparison 

 with other bodies, and a reduction to those simple natures and 

 their forms which meet, and are combined in the compound; 

 and we must assuredly pass from Vulcan to Minerva, if we wish 

 to bring to light the real texture and conformation of bodies, 

 upon which every occult and (as it is sometimes called) specific 

 property and virtue of things depends, and whence also every 

 rule of powerful change and transformation is deduced. 



For instance, we must examine what spirit is in every body, 

 what tangible essence; whether that spirit is copious and 

 exuberant, or meagre and scarce, fine or coarse, aeriform or 

 igniform, active or sluggish, weak or robust, progressive or 

 retrograde, abrupt or continuous, agreeing with external and 

 surrounding objects, or differing from them, etc. In like manner 

 must we treat tangible essence (which admits of as many dis- 

 tinctions as the spirit), and its hairs, fibres, and varied texture. 

 Again, the situation of the spirit in the corporeal mass, its pores, 

 passages, veins, and cells, and the rudiments or first essays of 

 the organic body, are subject to the same examination. In these, 

 however, as in our former inquiries, and therefore in the whole 

 investigation of latent conformation, the only genuine and clear 

 light which completely dispels all darkness and subtile difficul- 

 ties, is admitted by means of the primary axioms. 



8. This method will not bring us to atoms, which takes for 

 granted the vacuum, and immutability of matter (neither of 

 which hypotheses is correct), but to the real particles such as we 

 discover them to be. Nor is there any ground for alarm at this 

 refinement as if it were inexplicable, for, on the contrary, the 

 more inquiry is directed to simple natures, the more will every- 

 thing be placed in a plain and perspicuous light, since we trans- 

 fer our attention from the complicated to the simple, from the 

 incommensurable to the commensurable, from surds to rational 

 quantities, from the indefinite and vague to the definite and 



