NOVUM ORGANUM 453 



continued for a considerable time, and one might easily be led 

 into the mistake of supposing it to float and remain in the air 

 during the whole time, which is most erroneous. For the 

 reverberation is not one identical sound, but the repetition of 

 sounds, which is made manifest by stopping and confining the 

 sonorous body ; thus, if a bell be stopped and held tightly, so 

 as to be immovable, the sound fails, and there is no further 

 reverberation, and if a musical string be touched after the first 

 vibration, either with the finger (as in the harp), or a quill (as 

 in the harpsichord), the sound immediately ceases. If the mag- 

 net be removed the iron falls. The moon, however, cannot be 

 removed from the sea, nor the earth from a heavy falling body, 

 and we can, therefore, make no experiment upon them ; but the 

 case is the same. 



Let the fourteenth motion be that configuration or position, 

 by which bodies appear to desire a peculiar situation, colloca- 

 tion, and configuration with others, rather than union or sep- 

 aration. This is a very abstruse notion, and has not been well 

 investigated ; and, in some instances, appears to occur almost 

 without any cause, although we be mistaken in supposing this 

 to be really the case. For if it be asked, why the heavens re- 

 volve from east to west, rather than from west to east, or why 

 they turn on poles situate near the Bears, rather than round 

 Orion or any other part of the heaven, such a question appears 

 to be unreasonable, since these phenomena should be received 

 as determinate and the objects of our experience. There are, 

 indeed, some ultimate and self-existing phenomena in nature, 

 but those which we have just mentioned are not to be referred 

 to that class : for we attribute them to a certain harmony and 

 consent of the universe, which has not yet been properly ob- 

 served. But if the motion of the earth from west to east be al- 

 lowed, the same question may be put, for it must also revolve 

 round certain poles, and why should they be placed where they 

 are, rather than elsewhere? The polarity and variation of the 

 needle come under our present head. There is also observed 

 in both natural and artificial bodies, especially solids rather than 

 fluids, a particular collocation and position of parts, resembling 

 hairs or fibres, which should be diligently investigated, since, 

 without a discovery of them, bodies cannot be conveniently con- 

 trolled or wrought upon. The eddies observable in liquids by 

 which, when compressed, they successively raise different parts 

 of their mass before they can escape, so as to equalize the 

 pressure, is more correctly assigned to the motion of liberty. 



Let the fifteenth motion be that of transmission or of passage, 

 by which the powers of bodies are more or less impeded or ad- 

 vanced by the medium, according to the nature of the bodies 

 and their effective powers, and also according to that of the 



