u^ 



454 NOVUJl ORGANUM. [bOOK B. 



cuiljLadniitted to tlie ante-chamber of naiure, and do not prepare 

 an entrance -into lier''presence-room. But nobody can endue a 

 giten body with a new nature, or transform it successfully and 

 appropriately into a new body, without possessing a complete 

 knowledge of the body so to be changed or transformed. For 

 he will run into vain, or, at least, into difficult and perverse 

 methods, ill' adapted to the nature of the body upon which 

 he operates. A clear path, therefore, towards this object also 

 must be thrown open, and well supported. 



Labour is well and usefully bestowed upon the anatomy of 

 organized bodies, such as those of men and animals, which 

 appears to be a subtile matter, and an useful examination of 

 nature. The species of anatomy, however, is that of first sight, 

 open to the senses, and takes place only in organized bodies. It 

 is obvious,- and of ready access, when compared with the real 

 anatomy of latent conformation in bodies which are considered 

 feimilar, particularly in specific objects and their parts ; as those 

 of iron, stone, and the similar parts of plants and animals, as the 

 root, the leaf, the flower, the flesh, the blood, and bones, &c. 

 Yet human industry has not completely neglected this species of 

 anatomy ; for we have an instance of it in the separation of 

 similar .bodies by distillation, and other solutions, which shows 

 the dissimilarity of the compound by the union of the homo- 

 geneous parts. These methods are useful, and of importance to 

 our inquiry, although attended generally with fallacy : for many 

 natures are assigned and attributed to the separate bodies, as if 

 they had previously existed in the compound, which, in reality, 

 are recently bestowed and superinduced by fire and heat, and 

 the other modes of separation. Besides, it is, after all, but a 

 small part of the labour of discovering the real conformation in 

 the compound, which is so subtile and nice, that it is rather con- 

 fused and lost by the operation of the fire, than discovered and 

 brought to light. 



A separation and solution of bodies, therefore, is to be effected, 

 not by fire indeed, but rather by reasoning and true induction, 

 with the assistance of experiment, and by a comparison with 

 other bodies, and a reduction to those simple natures and their 

 forms which meet, and are combined in the compound ; and we 

 must assuredly pass from Vulcan to Minerva, if we wish to 

 bring to light the real texture and conformation of bodies, upon 

 which every occult and (as it is sometimes called) specific pro- 

 perty and virtue of things depends, and whence also every rule 

 of powerful change and transformation is deduced. 



For instance, we must examine what spirit is in every body,* 

 what tangible assence ; whether that spirit is copious and ex- 



* By spirit. Bacon here plainly implies material fluid too fine to be 

 grasped by the unassisted sense, which rather operates than reasjna, 



