i f&amp;gt;4 A D VANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Beck 



carrieth men in narrow and restrained ways, subject to many accidents 

 of impediments, imitating the ordinary flexuous courses of nature ; but 

 &quot; latas undique sunt sapientibus vice : &quot; to sapience, which %yas 

 anciently denned to be &quot;rerum divinarum et humanarum suentia,&quot; 

 there is ever choice of means : for physical causes give light to new 

 invention in simili matcria. But whosoever knoweth any form, 

 knoweth the utmost possibility of super-inducing that nature upon any 

 variety of matter, and so is less restrained in operation, either to the 

 basis of the matter, or the condition of the efficient : which kind of 

 knowledge Solomon likewise, though in a more divine sense, elegantly 

 describeth : &quot; Non arctabuntur gressus tui, et currens non habebis 

 offendiculum.&quot; The ways of sapience are not much liable cither to 

 particularity or chance. 



The second part of metaphysic is the inquiry of final causes, which 

 I am moved to report, not as omitted, but as misplaced ; and yet if it 

 were but a fault in order, I would not speak of it : for order is matter 

 of illustration, but pertaineth not to the substance of sciences. But 

 this misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great impro- 

 ficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, 

 mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe 

 and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the 

 occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the 

 great arrest and prejudice of farther discovery. 



For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon 

 that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others, which do usually like 

 wise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes. For to say that the 

 hairs of the eyelids are for a quickset and fence about the sight ; or, 

 that the firmness of the skins and hides of living creatures is to defend 

 them from the extremities of heat or cold ; or, that the bones are for 

 the columns or beams, whereupon the frame of the bodies of living 

 creatures are built ; or, that the leaves of trees are for the protecting of 

 the fruit ; or, that the clouds are for watering of the earth ; or, that the 

 solidness of the earth is for the station and mansion of living creatures, 

 and the like, is well inquired and collected in metaphysic ; but in 

 physic they are impertinent. Nay, they are indeed but remoras and 

 hinderances to stay and slug the ship from farther sailing, and have 

 brought this to pass, that the search of the physical causes hath been 

 iv. glectcd, and passed in silence. 



And therefore the natural philosophy of Democritus, and some 

 others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, 

 but attributed the form thereof, able to maintain itself, to infinite 

 essays or proofs cf nature, which they term fortune : seemeth to me, 

 as far as I can judge by the recital and fragments which remain unto 

 us, in particularities of physical causes, more real and better inquired 

 than that of Aristotle and Plato ; whereof both intermingled final 

 causes, the one as a part of theology, the other as a part of logic, which 

 were the favourite studies respectively of both those persons. Not 

 because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be inquired, being 

 kept within their own province; but because their excursions into th.o 

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