BOOK n.] APHORISMS. 455 



nberant, or meagre and scarce, fine or coarse, aerifonn or 

 igniform, active or sluggish, weak or robust, progressire or 

 retrograde, abrupt or continuous, agreeing with external and 

 surrounding objects, or differing from them, &c. In like manner 

 must we treat tangible essence (which admits of as many dis- 

 tinctions as the spirit), and its hairs, fibres, and varied textupo. 

 Again, the situation of the spirit in the corporeal mass, its pores, 

 passages, veins, and cells, and the rudiments or first essays of 

 the organic body, are subject to the same examination. In these, 

 however, as in our former mquiries, and therefore in the wliolo 

 investigation of latent conformation, the only genuine and clear 

 light which completely dispels all darkness and subtile diificulties, 

 is admitted by means of the primary axioms. 



VIII. This method will not bring us to atoms,* which takes 

 for granted the vacuum, and immutability of matter (neither of 

 M'hich hypotheses is correct), but to the real particles such as wo 

 discover them to be. Nor is there any ground for alarm at this 

 refinement as if it were inexplicable, for, on the contrary, jjie — 

 more, inqiiiry is directed to simple natures, the more will every- 

 thing be placed ill a plain and perspicuous light, since we transfer 

 our attention from the complicated to the simple, froni the in- 

 commensurable to the commensurable, from surds to rational 

 quantities, from the indefinite and vague to the definite and 

 certain; as. when we arrive at the elements of letters, and the 

 simple tones of concords. The investi";ation of nature is best 

 conducted when mathematics are appUed to phyjsks*. Again, let 

 none be alarmed at vast numbers and fractions, for in calculation 

 it is as easy to set down or to refieet upon a thousand as 

 an unit, or the thousandth part of an integer as an integer 

 itself. 



IX.l From the two kinds of axioms above specified, arise the 



We sometimes adopt the same mode of expression, as in the words 

 spirits of nitre, spirits of wine. Some such agency has been assumed by 

 nearly all the modern physicists, a few of whom, along with Bacon, 

 would leave us to gather from their expressions, that they believe such 

 bodies endowed with the sentient powers of perception. As another 

 specimen of his sentiment on this subject, we may refer to a paragraph 

 on the decomposition of compounds, in his essay on death, beginning — 

 ** The spirit which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due 

 subjection ; wlien it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts 

 unite." Ed, 



■< The theory of the Epicureans and others. The atoms are supposed 

 to be invisible, inalterable particles, endued with all the properties ot 

 the given body, and forming that body by their union. They must be 

 separated, of course, which either takes a vacuum for granted, or intro- 

 duces a tertium quid into the composition of the body. 



' Compare the three following aphorisms with the three last chapterf 

 of tke third book of the " Pe Augmeutis Scientiarum." 



