XOVUM ORGANUAf. 



tnnce, it is probable that the intermediate bodies are disposed and 

 altered ; the more so because they require a medium qualified to carry 

 on such operations. Hut that magnetic or combining virtue admits of 

 media, as it were, without distinction, nor is the virtue impeded in any 

 kind of medium. And if that influence or action has nothing to do 

 witli the intermediate body, it follows that there is a natural virtue or 

 action existing for a certain time and in a certain space without a 

 body, since it neither exists in limiting nor in intermediate bodies. 

 Wherefore that magnetic action will be an Instance of Divorce between 

 Corporeal Nature and Natural Action. To which maybe added, as a 

 corollary or advantage not to be passed by, that even the philosophy 

 which is drawn from the senses is not necessarily without a proof of 

 the existence of essences and substances separate and incorporeal. 

 For if a natural influence and action, emanating from a body, can 

 exist for a certain time and in a certain place altogether without a 

 body, it is probable that it can also emanate originally from an in 

 corporeal substance. For it seems that corporeal nature is required 

 no less for sustaining and carrying on natural action than for exciting 

 or generating it. 



xxxviii. There now follow five orders of Instances, which we arc 

 wont to call by one general name, Instances of tJic I.amf*, or of First 

 Information. They are those which assist the senses. For since all 

 interpretation of Nature begins with the senses, and leads from the 

 perception of the senses, by a straight, regular, and well-constructed 

 way, to the perceptions of the Understanding, which are true Notions 

 and Axioms, it necessarily follows that the more copious and exact 

 the representations or reports of the sense itself, the more easily and 

 prosperously will everything go on. 



Now of these five Instances of the Lamp the first strengthen, enlarge, 

 and rectify the immediate action of the senses ; the second make that 

 an object of sense which was not such before; the third indicate the 

 continued processes or series of those things and motions which arc, 

 for the most part, unnoticed, except in their end and periods ; the 

 fourth substitute something for the sense when it completely fails ; 

 the fifth excite the attention and notice of the sense, and at the same 

 time limit the subtlety of things. Of these we have now to speak 

 separately. 



xxxix. Among Prerogative Instances we shall put in the sixteenth 

 place, Instances of the Door or Gate ; for so we call those which assist 

 the immediate actions of the sense. Now among the senses sight 

 holds clearly the first place in providing information ; for this sense, 

 therefore, we must chiefly seek aid. Now aids to sight appear to 

 admit of three divisions ; it may either perceive things which arc not 

 visible, or it may perceive them at a greater distance, or it may per 

 ceive them more exactly anil distinctly. 



Of the first class (omitting spectacles and the like, which avail only 

 to correct and alleviate the infirmity of ill-constituted vision, and so 

 give no further information) are the glasses lately invented ; for they 

 the latent and invisible details of bodies, their hidden structures 



