him reflect that things in their units and their aggregates, are equally mastered by calculation. For one expresses or conceives with the same facility a thousand years and a thousand moments, though years are composed of multitudes of moments. And again, let no one think, that such studies are matter of speculative curiosity, rather than connected with practical effects and uses. For it is observable that almost all the philosophers and others, who have most intensely busied themselves, who have probed nature to the quick as it were, in the process of experiment and practical detail; have been led on to such investigations, though unfortunate in the mode of conducting them. Nor does there exist a more powerful and more certain cause of that utter barrenness of utility which distinguishes the philosophy of the day, than its ambitious affectation of subtilty about mere words or vulgar notions, while it has neither pursued nor planned a well supported investigation of the subtilty of nature.

Of the equality or inequality of Atoms, or seminal Particles.

II.

The theories and maxims of Pythagoras were for the most part better adapted to found a peculiar order of religionists, than to open a new school in philosophy, as was verified by the event. For that system of training prevailed and flourished more under the sway of the Manichæan heresy and Mahomedan superstition, than among philosophic individuals. Notwithstanding this, his opinion that the world was composed of numbers, may be taken in a sense in which it goes deep into the elementary principles of nature. For there are (as indeed there may be) two doctrines with respect to atoms or seminal particles; the one that of Democritus, which ascribes to atoms inequality one to another, figure, and in virtue of figure position; the other that of Pythagoras perhaps, which affirms them to be all precisely equal and alike. Now he who ascribes to atoms equality, necessarily makes all things depend on numbers; while he who clothes them with other attributes, admits in addition to mere numbers, or modes of assemblage, certain primitive properties inherent in single atoms. Now the practical question collateral to the theoretical one, and which ought to determine its limits, is this, which Democritus proposes; whether all things can be made out of all? To me, however, this question appears not to have been maturely weighed, if it be understood as referring to an imme

diate transmutation of bodies. It is whether all things do not pass through an appointed circuit and succession of transformations, that is the legitimate subject of inquiry. For there is not a doubt that the elementary particles, though they were originally equal, become, after having been cast into certain assemblages and knots, entirely impregnated with the nature of the dissimilar bodies they compose, till the several assemblages or knots of matter undergo solution; so that the properties and affections of things in concretion, offer no less resistance and impediment to immediate transmutation, than of things in their simplest elements. But Democritus, acute as he is in tracing the principles of quiescent body, is found unequal to himself, and deficient in knowledge of his subject, when he comes to examine the principles of motion; a common failing of all the philosophers. And I know not but the investigation we are now handling, of the primary character of seminal and atomic particles is of a utility greatly superior to all others whatsoever, as forming the sovereign rule of action and of power, and the true criterion of hope and operation. Another inquiry also proceeds from it, less comprehensively useful indeed, in its scope, but more immediately connected with practice and useful works. It is respecting separation and alteration, that is, what operations are the effect of separation, and what of the other process. For it is an error habitual to the human mind, and which has derived great force and depth from the philosophy of the alchymists, to ascribe those appearances to separation which look quite the other way. For instance, when water passes into the state of vapour, one would readily suppose that the more subtile part of the fluid was extricated, and the grosser remained, as is seen in wood, where part flies off in flame and smoke, part is left in the form of ashes. One might infer that something analogous to this takes place in the water also, though not so discernible to observation. For though the whole mass of water is observed to bubble up and waste away, yet it might occur, that a sort of sediment of it, its ashes as it were, still remained in the vessel. Yet such an impression is delusive; for it is most certain, that the entire body of water may be converted into air, and if any portion still continues in the vessel, that does not happen in consequence of its separation and segregation as the grosser part, but because a certain quantity of the fluid, though of precisely the same substance with the part which evaporates, remains in contact with the internal surface of the vessel.

The same thing is distinctly visible in the case of quicksilver, the whole of which is volatilized and then condensed again without the substraction of the smallest particle. In the oil of lamps too, and in the tallow of candles, the whole of the fat is sublimated, and there is no incineration, for the fuliginous matter is formed not before but after the ignition, and is, so to speak, the corpse of the flame, not a deposition of the oil or tallow.

And this lays open one way to overturn the theory of Democritus, with respect to the diversity of seminal particles or atoms; a way, I say, in the process of investigating nature herself: in opinion indeed there is another way to overturn it, much more smooth and easy, as the received philosophy assumes its phantasmal matter, to be common to the forms of nature, and equally susceptible of them all.

Of the Remissness of the Ancients in investigating Motion, and moving Principles.

III.

To place the investigation of nature chiefly in the consideration and examination of motion, is the characteristic of him who has an eye to practical effect as his object. And to indulge in meditation and reverie, respecting the principles of nature viewed as quiescent, belongs to such as desire to spin out dissertations, or supply matter of argumentative subtlety. Now those principles I call quiescent, which inform us of what elements things are compounded, and consist; but not by what energy or in what way they effect these coalitions. For it is not enough, with a view to action and the enlargement of the power and operation of man, nor does it in fact bear materially on these ends at all, to know what are the constituent parts of things, if you are ignorant of the modes and processes of their transformations and metamorphoses. For to take an example from the mechanical adepts (in whose heated imagination those famous speculations regarding the first principles of nature appear to have had their origin), is the man who knows the simples that enter into the composition of an alexipharmic (or antidote), necessarily able in consequence, to prepare an alexipharmic? Or is he who has got a correct analysis of the ingredients of sugar, glass, or canvass, to be therefore supposed a master of the art of their preparation and manufacture? Yet it is in speculating and inquiring with respect to this description of dead principles, that the meditations of men have been hitherto prin

cipally absorbed: as if one were of set purpose and resolution, to employ himself in poring over the dissection of the dead carcass of nature, rather than to set himself to ascertain the powers and properties of living nature. Indeed the examination of the principles of motion is generally looked upon as a matter by the way, so that it passes admiration in what a perfunctory and remiss manner, a subject of all others the most momentous and most useful, has been investigated and treated. For to turn our attention for a moment to the themes which are actually discoursed of; will the impulse communicated to matter by privation, the formation of matter on mind (or archetypal ideas), the coalition of like particles, the fortuitous play of atoms in vacancy, the enmity and friendship supposed to exist in substances, the mutual action of heaven and earth on one another, the commerce of the elements by the intermediation of consenting properties, the influence of the celestial bodies, occult and specific medicinal powers and properties of drugs, fate, fortune, necessity; will, I say, such vague generalities as these, which are nothing but phantasms and spectral illusions floating about and playing on the surface of things, as in water, really advance the blessings, or effectually augment the powers of man. They indeed occupy or rather inflate the imagination, but contribute absolutely nothing to establish new methods of working nature, to the power of altering her forms, or commanding her motions. And again, all their attempts to reason and subtilize regarding motion, natural and violent, motion self-determined or impressed exteriorly, the limitations of motion, these too do not enter to any depth the trunk of nature, but show rather like figures inscribed in the bark. Wherefore dismissing such speculations, or condemning them to exile among the theatres of popular display, we must make it our business to trace those affections and tendencies of things, by which that surprising multiplicity of effects and of changes, visible alike in the works of art and of nature, grows up and emerges into view. We must thus endeavour to bind nature as a Proteus; for the various species of motions, duly discovered and methodically discriminated, may be regarded as the true bonds to tie this Proteus withal. For according as the just impulses and restraints of motion, that is, of matter stimulated to activity or restrained in it, are invented and applied, there follows the capacity of modifying and transmuting matter itself.

Of the common Division of Motion, that it is equally deficient in point of Utility and of Discrimination.

IV.

The division of motion in the philosophy in vogue appears to be superficial and without foundation, as it forms its distribution of it only by its effects, and does not at all conduce to our knowledge of it by its causes. For generation, corruption, increase, diminution, alteration, removal to place, are only the operations and effects of motions, which having attained to the production of a visible transmutation of things, palpable to vulgar observation, are (in the inertness of common apprehension) distinguished by these appellations. We have no doubt that the meaning of the terms stands thus:-that when bodies in the progression of their motion (of whatever character the motion be) have reached that point at which they assume a new form, or lay aside the old, (forming a sort of full break, and the completion of a regular stage of that motion), this is termed the motion of generation and corruption. Again, if the configuration remaining the same, they acquire only a new quantity or measure of dimension, this is called the motion of increase and diminution: so also, if the mass and the outline of the object remain unaltered, yet its quality, operations, and properties, undergo change, this is said to be the motion of alteration; lastly, if the body continue unmodified in figure matter and quantity, but change its place, and that only, this is indicated by the words motion of removal. But to him who looks into this matter with something more of penetration and accuracy, these phrases will appear to represent only points in the measurement of motion, pauses and breaks in it, or, as it were, the successive courses motions have to run, and tasks they have to perform, but to convey no real distinctions; as they only point to that which has been done, but scarcely even hint at the mode of doing it. Words of this description are required for the purpose of giving information, and adjusted to the forms of the scholastic logic, but they are utterly unproductive of physical knowledge. For they all signify motions combined, recombined, and in manifold ways still further combined; whereas men of more acute meditation ought to penetrate to simpler principles. For the principles, the sources, the causes, and the modes of motion, that is, the tendencies and appetencies of every form of matter, are the proper field of philosophy; and so in their