[198] In the Novum Organum he seems to have gone a little beyond this, and to have hoped that the form itself of concrete things might be known. Datæ autem naturæ formam, sive differentiam veram, sive naturam naturantem, sive fontem emanationis (ista enim vocabula habemus, quæ ad indicationem rei proxime accedunt), invenire opus et intentio est Humanæ Scientiæ. Lib. ii. 1. [199] Advancement of Learning, book ii. This sentence he has scarcely altered in the Latin. |Final causes too much slighted.| 51. The second object of metaphysics, according to Lord Bacon’s notion of the word, was the investigation of final causes. It is well known that he has spoken of this with unguarded disparagement.[200] “Like a virgin consecrated to God, it bears nothing;” one of those witty conceits that sparkle over his writings, but will not bear a severe examination. It has been well remarked that almost at the moment he published this, one of the most important discoveries of his age, the circulation of the blood, had rewarded the acuteness of Harvey in reasoning on the final cause of the valves in the veins. [200] Causa finalis tantum abest ut prosit, ut etiam scientias corrumpat, nisi in hominis actionibus. Nov. Org. ii. 2. It must be remembered that Bacon had good reason to deprecate the admixture of theological dogmas with philosophy, which had been, and has often since been, the absolute perversion of all legitimate reasoning in science. See what Stewart has said upon Lord Bacon’s objection to reasoning from final causes in _physics_. Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, book iii., chap. 2, sect. 4. |Man not included by him in physics.| 52. Nature, or physical philosophy, according to Lord Bacon’s partition, did not comprehend the human species. Whether this be not more consonant to popular language, adopted by preceding systems of philosophy, than to a strict and perspicuous arrangement, may by some be doubted; though a very respectable authority, that of Dugald Stewart, is opposed to including man in the province of physics. For it is surely strange to separate the physiology of the human body, as quite a science of another class, from that of inferior animals; and if we place this part of our being under the department of physical philosophy, we shall soon be embarrassed by what Bacon has called the “doctrina de fœdere,” the science of the connection between the soul of man and his bodily frame, a vast and interesting field, even yet very imperfectly explored. |Man, in body and mind.| |Logic.|