102 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



is the doctrine concerning the principles or originals 

 of things. The third is the doctrine concerning all 

 variety and particularity of things ; whether it be of 

 the diflfering substances, or their differing quaUties 

 and natures ; whereof there needeth no enumeration, 

 this part being but as a gloss or paraphrase that 

 attendeth upon the text of natural history. Of these 

 three I cannot report any as deficient. In what truth 

 or perfection they are handled, I make not now any 

 judgement ; but they are parts of knowledge not 

 deserted by the labour of man. 



5. For metaphysic, we have assigned unto it the 

 inquiry of formal and final causes ; which assignation, 

 as to the former of them, may seem to be nugatory 

 and void, because of the received and inveterate 

 opinion, that the inquisition of man is not competent 

 to find out essential forms or true differences : of which 

 opinion we will take this hold, that the invention of 

 forms is of all other parts of knowledge the worthiest 

 to be sought, if it be possible to be found. As for the 

 possibiUty, they are ill discoverers that think there is 

 no land, when they can see nothing but sea. But it is 

 manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one 

 that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did 

 descry that forms were the true object of knowledge ; but 

 lost the real fruit of his opinion, by considering of 

 forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not 

 confined and determined by matter ; and so turning 

 his opinion upon theology, wherewith all his natural 

 philosophy is infected. But if any man shall keep 

 a continual watchful and severe eye upon action, 

 operation, and the use of knowledge, he may advise 

 and take notice what are the forms, the disclosures 

 whereof are fruitful and important to the state of man. 

 For as to the forms of substances (man only except, of 

 whom it is said, ' Forma vit hominem de limo terrae, 

 et spiravit in faciem eius spiraculum vitae,' and not as 

 of all other creatures, ' Producant aquae, producat 

 terra '), the forms of substances I say (as they are now 

 by compounding and transplanting multiplied) are so 



