Selected Philosophical Works by Sargent Rose-Mary Bacon Francis

Author:Sargent, Rose-Mary, Bacon, Francis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Published: 2011-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

APHORISMS

CONCERNING THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE

AND THE KINGDOM OF MAN

[BOOK TWO]

1

On a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures, is the work and aim of human power. Of a given nature to discover the Form, or true specific difference, or nature-engendering nature, or source of emanation (for these are the terms which come nearest to a description of the thing), is the work and aim of human knowledge. Subordinate to these primary works are two others that are secondary and of inferior mark. To the former, the transformation of concrete bodies, so far as this is possible. To the latter, the discovery, in every case of generation and motion, of the latent process carried on from the manifest efficient and the manifest material to the Form which is engendered. And in like manner the discovery of the latent configuration of bodies at rest and not in motion.

2

In what an ill condition human knowledge is at the present time, is apparent even from the commonly received maxims. It is a correct position that “True knowledge is knowledge by causes.” And causes again are not improperly distributed into four kinds: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. But of these the final cause rather corrupts than advances the sciences, except such as have to do with human action. The discovery of the formal is despaired of. The efficient and the material (as they are investigated and received, that is, as remote causes, without reference to the latent process leading to the Form) are but slight and superficial, and contribute little, if anything, to true and active science. Nor have I forgotten that in a former passage I noted and corrected as an error of the human mind that opinion that forms give existence. For though in nature nothing really exists beside individual bodies, performing pure individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy this very law, and the investigation, discovery, and explanation of it, is the foundation as well of knowledge as of operations. And it is this law, with its clauses, that I mean when I speak of Forms—a name which I the rather adopt because it has grown into use and become familiar.

3

If a man be acquainted with the causes of any nature (as whiteness or heat) in certain subjects only, his knowledge is imperfect. And if he be able to superinduce an effect on certain substances only (of those susceptible of such effect), his power is in like manner imperfect. Now, if a man’s knowledge be confined to the efficient and material causes (which are unstable causes and merely vehicles, or causes which convey the Form in certain cases) he may arrive at new discoveries in reference to substances in some degree similar to one another, and selected beforehand, but he does not touch the deeper boundaries of things. But whosoever is acquainted with Forms, embraces the unity of nature in substances the most unlike, and is able therefore to detect

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