Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the AncientsBacon, Francis
Philosophy
Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients
Bacon, Francis
Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626; English essays -- Early modern, 1500-1700; Mythology, Classical
The divine philosopher declares, that “God has made every thing
beautiful in its season; and has given over the world to our disputes
and inquiries; but that man cannot find out the work which God has
wrought, from its beginning up to its end.” Thus the summary or
collective law of nature, or the principle of love, impressed by God
upon the original particles of all things, so as to make them attack
each other and come together, by the repetition and multiplication
whereof all the variety in the universe is produced, can scarce
possibly find full admittance into the thoughts of men, though some
faint notion may be had thereof. The Greek philosophy is subtile, and
busied in discovering the material principles of things, but negligent
and languid in discovering the principles of motion, in which the
energy and efficacy of every operation consists. And here the Greek
philosophers seem perfectly blind and childish; for the opinion of the
Peripatetics, as to the stimulus of matter, by privation, is little
more than words, or rather sound than signification. And they who refer
it to God, though they do well therein, yet they do it by a start, and
not by proper degrees of assent; for doubtless there is one summary, or
capital law, in which nature meets, subordinate to God, viz: the law
mentioned in the passage above quoted from Solomon; or the work which
God has wrought from its beginning to its end.
Democritus, who further considered this subject, having first supposed
an atom, or corpuscle, of some dimension or figure, attributed thereto
an appetite, desire, or first motion simply, and another comparatively,
imagining that all things properly tended to the centre of the world;
those containing more matter falling faster to the centre, and thereby
removing, and in the shock driving away, such as held less. But this
is a slender conceit, and regards too few particulars; for neither
the revolutions of the celestial bodies, nor the contractions and
expansions of things, can be reduced to this principle. And for the
opinion of Epicurus, as to the declination and fortuitous agitation of
atoms, this only brings the matter back again to a trifle, and wraps it
up in ignorance and night.
Cupid is elegantly drawn a perpetual child; for compounds are larger
things, and have their periods of age; but the first seeds or atoms of
bodies are small, and remain in a perpetual infant state.
He is again justly represented naked; as all compounds may properly
be said to be dressed and clothed, or to assume a personage; whence
nothing remains truly naked, but the original particles of things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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