128 • ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING. [bOOK III 



And whoever despises the imaginary separation between 

 terrestrial and celestial things, and well understands tlie 

 more general appetites and passions of matter,^ which arc 

 powerful in both, may receive a clear information of what 

 happens above from that which happens below ; and from 

 what passes in the heavens, he may become acquainted with 

 some inferior motions hitherto undiscovered, not as these are 

 f,'overned by those, but as they both have the same common 

 passions. We, therefore, report this physical part of astro- 

 nomy as wanting, in comparison of which the present 

 animated astronomy is but as the stuffed ox of Prometheus 

 — aping the form but wanting the substance. 



But for astrology, it is so full of superstition, that scarce 

 anything sound can be discovered in it ; though we judge it 

 should rather be purged than absolutely rejected. But if any 

 one shall pretend that this science is founded, not in reason 



Kepler, and Gilbert employed to dethrone the Ptolemaic theory of 

 the heavens. Bacon was too jealous of Gilbert to entertain one 

 moment any doctrine that he advanced; and a little further on he 

 alludes to his mathematical thesis in favour of the earth's diurnal 

 motion as proofs contradicted by natural philosophy, though incapable 

 of being confuted by observation. From such demonstrations, how- 

 ever, astronomy could no more be regarded as a branch of mathematics 

 than commerce or politics, because they sometimes call in the aid of 

 arithmetic ; and if Bacon had followed out this strange notion, he must 

 have made, with lamblicus, numbers the parent of all knowledge, as 

 there is no department of science advanced beyond mere empiricism 

 which does not rest upon the basis of figures. The degradation which 

 Bacon imputes to astronomy from its association with mathematics 

 shows that the most acute minds are no more privileged than the 

 weakest to decide questions in relation to things of which they are per- 

 fectly ignorant. It is needless to say that a science only advances 

 beyond empiricism to those intermediate or general axioms which Bacon 

 so ardently desired to reach, so far as its phenomena admit of being 

 extended and corrected by mathematical forms, and that it was only 

 through such agencies that astronomj^ almost in the space of a single 

 age, was transformed from a mere empiric colligation of facts into the 

 highest of the deductive sciences. The confusion arose from the conse- 

 quences of Bacon's fiindamental division of the sciences, which confounded 

 those which are purely formal with the substantive sciences of which 

 they are in some measure a universal condition, and hindered B.ncon 

 from seizing with precision upon the functions and limits of these 

 sciences, and comprehending the important part the mathematical 

 portion of them perform, in extending «,nd corroborating physical di^H 

 covery. Ed. 

 * Tendencies, forces, efforts, and ettects. l.d^ 



