CHAP. IV.] DIVISION OF METAPHYSICS. 139 



of letters are infinite ; but practicable, easy, and useful to 

 discover tlie form of a sound expressing a single letter, or 

 by what collision or application of the organs of the voice, 

 it was made ; and as these forms of letters being known, we 

 are thence directly led to inquire the forms of words : so, to 

 inquire the torm of an oak, a lion, gold, water, or air, were 

 at present vain ; but to inquire the form of density, rarity, 

 heat, cold, gravity, levity, and other schemes of matter and 

 motions, which, like the letters of the alphabet, are few in 

 number, yet make and support the essences and forms of all 

 substances, is what we would endeavour after, as constituting 

 «iid determining that part of metaphysics we are now upon. 



Nor does this hinder physics from considering the same 

 natures in their lluxile causes only ; thus, if the cause of 

 whiteness in snow, or fmth, were inquired into, it is judged 

 to be a subtile intermixture of air with water ; but this is 

 far from being the form of whiteness, since air intermixed 

 with powdered glass or ciystal is also judged to produce 

 whiteness no less than when mixed with water : this, there- 

 fore, is only the efficient cause, and no other than the vehicle 

 of the form. But if the inquiry be made in metaphysics, it 

 will be found that two transparent bodies, intermixed in 

 their optical portions, and in a simple order, make whiteness. 

 This part of metaphysics I find defective ; and no wonder ; 

 because in the method of inquiry hitherto used, the forms of 

 things can never appear. The misfortune lies here, that men 

 have accustomed themselves to hurry away, and abstract 

 their thoughts too hastily, and carry them too remote from 

 experience and particulars, and have given themselves wholly 

 up to their own meditations and arguments. 



The use of this part of metaphysics is recommended by 

 two principal things : first, as it is the office and excellence 

 of all sciences to shorten the long turnings and windings of 

 experience, so as to remove the ancient complaint of the 

 scantiness of life, and the tediousness of art ;^ this is beat 

 l)erformed by collecting and uniting the axioms of the 

 sciences into more general ones, that shall suit the matter ci 

 all individuals. Por the sciences are like pyramids, erected 

 upon the single basis of history and experience, and therefore 



< Compare Plat. Thoeet. i 155, 156. 



