138 ADVANCEMENT OP LEi^RNlNG. [BOOK II J 



Severinus into a body and harmony of pliilosopliy ; or of 

 Telesiiis, wlio, in restoring the philosophy of Parmenides, has 

 turned their own weapons against the Peripatetics ; or of 

 Gilbert, who revived the doctrines of Philolaus ; or of any 

 other, provided lie be worthy. But as there are whole 

 volumes of these authors extant, we would only have the 

 result drawn out and joined to the rest. And so much for 

 physics and its appendages. 



To metaphysics we assign the inquiry of formal and final 

 causes. But an opinion has prevailed, as if the essential 

 forms, or real diflerences of things, were absolutely undis- 

 coverable by human means ; granting, at the same time, that 

 if they could be discovered, this, of all the parts of knowledge, 

 would be the most worthy of inquiry. As to the possibility 

 of the thing, there are indolent discoverers, who see nothing 

 but sea and sky, absolutely deny there can be any land beyond 

 them. But it iu manifest that Plato, a man of a sublime 

 genius, who took a view of everything as from a high rocl?, 

 saw in his doctrine of ideas, that "forms were the true object 

 of knov/ledge;"q though he lost the advantage of this just 

 opinion by contemplating and grasping at forms totally 

 abstracted from matter, and not as determined in it j'' whence 

 he turned aside to theological speculations, and therewith 

 infected all his natural philosophy. But if with diligence, 

 seriousness, and sincerity, w^e turn our eyes to action and use, 

 we may find, and become acquainted with those forms, the 

 Icnowledge whereof will wonderfully enrich and pros][)er 

 human affairs. 



The forms of substances, indeed, viz. the species of crea- 

 tures,^ are so complicated and interwoven, that the inquiry 

 into them is either vain, or should be laid aside for a time, 

 and resumed after the forms of a more simple nature have 

 been duly sifted and discovered. For as it were neither easy 

 nor useful to discover the form of a sound that shall make 

 a word, since words, by the composition and transpositiona 



1 In the Timacus, passim, et Eep. x. init. Cf. Hooker, i. 3, 4 ; com- 

 pare also Hallam's Literature of Europe, part iii. c. 3, p. 402. 



■■ As Mr. Boyle has excellently shown, by a large induction of experi- 

 ments and crucial instances, wherewith most of his physical inquirioi 

 we enriched. 



• As plants, animals, minerals ; the elements fire, air, water, earth, &a 



