3 88 BACON 



tion : man, at least, is unable to do so, and is only allowed to 

 proceed first by negatives, and then to conclude with affirma- 

 tives, after every species of exclusion. 



16. We must, therefore, effect a complete solution and sepa- 

 ration of nature ; not by fire, but by the mind, that divine fire. 

 The first work of legitimate induction, in the discovery of forms, 

 is rejection, or the exclusive instances of individual natures, 

 which are not found in some one instance where the given nat- 

 ure is present, or are found in any one instance where it is ab- 

 sent, or are found to increase in any one instance where the 

 given nature decreases, or the reverse. After an exclusion 

 correctly effected, and affirmative form will remain as the resid- 

 uum, solid, true, and well defined, whilst all volatile opinions 

 go off in smoke. This is readily said ; but we must arrive at it 

 by a circuitous route. We shall perhaps, however, omit noth- 

 ing that can facilitate our progress. 



17. The first and almost perpetual precaution and warning 

 which we consider necessary is this; that none should suppose 

 from the great part assigned by us to forms, that we mean such 

 forms as the meditations and thoughts of men have hitherto 

 been accustomed to. In the first place, we do not at present 

 mean the concrete forms, which (as we have observed) are in the 

 common course of things compounded of simple natures, as 

 those of a lion, an eagle, a rose, gold, or the like. The moment 

 for discussing these will arrive when we come to treat of the 

 latent process and latent conformation, and the discovery of 

 them as they exist in what are called substances, or concrete 

 natures. 



Nor again, would we be thought to mean (even when treat- 

 ing of simple natures) any abstract forms or ideas, either un- 

 defined or badly defined in matter. For when we speak of 

 forms, we mean nothing else than those laws and regulations 

 of simple action which arrange and constitute any simple nat- 

 ure, such as heat, light, weight, in every species of matter, and 

 in a susceptible subject. The form of heat or form of light, 

 therefore, means no more than the law of heat or the law of 

 light. Nor do we ever abstract or withdraw ourselves from 

 things, and the operative branch of philosophy. When, there- 

 fore, we say (for instance) in our investigation of the form of 

 heat, Reject rarity, or, Rarity is not of the form of heat, it is 

 the same as if we were to say, Man can superinduce heat on a 

 dense body, or the reverse, Man can abstract or ward off heat 

 from a rare body. 



But if our forms appear to any one to be somewhat abstract- 

 ed, from their mingling and uniting heterogeneous objects (the 

 heat for instance of the heavenly bodies appears to be very dif- 

 ferent from that of fire ; the fixed red of the rose and the like, 



