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description or dilatation of His works; holy in the connection or
concatenation of them; and holy in the union of them in a perpetual
and uniform law. And, therefore, the speculation was excellent in
Parmenides and Plato, although but a speculation in them, that all
things by scale did ascend to unity. So then always that knowledge
is worthiest which is charged with least multiplicity, which
appeareth to be metaphysic; as that which considereth the simple
forms or differences of things, which are few in number, and the
degrees and co-ordinations whereof make all this variety. The
second respect, which valueth and commendeth this part of
metaphysic, is that it doth enfranchise the power of man unto the
greatest liberty and possibility of works and effects. For physic
carrieth men in narrow and restrained ways, subject to many
accidents and impediments, imitating the ordinary flexuous courses
of nature. But latae undique sunt sapientibus viae; to sapience
(which was anciently defined to be rerum divinarum et humanarum
scientia) there is ever a choice of means. For physical causes give
light to new invention in simili materia. But whosoever knoweth any
form, knoweth the utmost possibility of superinducing 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: non arctabuntur gressus
tui, et currens non habebis offendiculum. The ways of sapience are
not much liable either to particularity or chance.
(7) 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 improficience 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 further 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 likewise 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 frames of the bodies of living creatures are
built;" or that "the leaves of trees are for 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 hindrances to stay and slug the ship from
further sailing; and have brought this to pass, that the search of
the physical causes hath been neglected 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 of 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, and 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 the limits of physical causes hath
bred a vastness and solitude in that tract. For otherwise, keeping
their precincts and borders, men are extremely deceived if they
think there is an enmity or repugnancy at all between them. For the
cause rendered, that "the hairs about the eyelids are for the
safeguard of the sight," doth not impugn the cause rendered, that
"pilosity is incident to orifices of moisture--muscosi fontes, &c."
Nor the cause rendered, that "the firmness of hides is for the
armour of the body against extremities of heat or cold," doth not
impugn the cause rendered, that "contraction of pores is incident to
the outwardest parts, in regard of their adjacence to foreign or
unlike bodies;" and so of the rest, both causes being true and
compatible, the one declaring an intention, the other a consequence
only. Neither doth this call in question or derogate from Divine [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]