THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. 31 



in the thirteenth aphorism, Bacon asserts that the "forma 

 re.i " is " ipsissima res," and that the thing and its Form differ 

 only as "apparens et existens, aut exterius et interius, aut in 

 ordine ad hominem et in ordine ad universum." Here the\ 

 subjective and phenomenal character of the qualities whose form \ 

 is to be determined is distinctly and strongly indicated. / 



The principal passage in which the Form is spoken of as a law 

 occurs in the second aphorism of the same book. It is there 

 said that, although in nature nothing really exists (vere existat) 

 except " corpora individua edentia actus puros individuos ex 

 lege," yet that in doctrine this law is of fundamental import- 

 ance, and that it and its clauses (paragraphi) are what he means 

 when he speaks of Forms. 



In denying the real existence of anything beside individual 

 substances, Bacon opposes himself to the scholastic realism ; in 

 speaking of these substances as " edentia actus," he asserts the 

 doctrine of the essential activity of substance ; by adding the 

 epithet " puros " he separates what Aristotle termed s^rsXs^siat 

 from mere motions or /avrj<rsts, thereby by implication denying 

 the objective reality of the latter ; and, lastly, by using the 

 word " individuos," he implies that though in contemplation and 

 doctrine the form law of the substance (that is, the substantial 

 form) is resoluble into the forms of the simple natures which 

 belong to it, as into clauses, yet that this analysis is conceptual 

 only, and not real. 



It will be observed that the two modes in which Bacon 

 speaks of the Form, namely as ipsissima res and as a law, differ 

 only, though they cannot be reconciled, as two aspects of the 

 same object. 



Thus much of the character of the Baconian Form. That it 

 is after all only a physical conception appears sufficiently from 

 the examples already mentioned, and from the fact of its being 

 made the most important part of the subject-matter of the na- 

 tural sciences. 



The investigation of the Forms of natures or abstract qualities 

 is the principal object of the Baconian method of induction. 

 It is true that Bacon, although he gives the first place to inves- 

 tigations of this nature, does not altogether omit to mention as 

 a subordinate part of science, the study of concrete substances. 

 The first aphorism of the second book of the Novum Organum 

 sufficiently explains the relation in which, as he conceived, the 



