[25] The ancients supposed the planets to describe an exact circle round the south. As observations increased and facts were disclosed, which were irreconcilable with this supposition, the earth was removed from the centre to some other point in the circle, and the planets were supposed to revolve in a smaller circle (epicycle) round an imaginary point, which in its turn described a circle of which the earth was the centre. In proportion as observation elicited fresh facts, contradictory to these representations, other epicycles and eccentrics were added, involving additional confusion. Though Kepler had swept away all these complicated theories in the preceding century, by the demonstration of his three laws, which established the elliptical course of the planets, Bacon regarded him and Copernicus in the same light as Ptolemy and Xenophanes.--_Ed._ [26] Empedocles, of Agrigentum, flourished 444 B.C. He was the disciple of Telanges the Pythagorean, and warmly adopted the doctrine of transmigration. He resolved the universe into the four ordinary elements, the principles of whose composition were life and happiness, or concord and amity, but whose decomposition brought forth death and evil, or discord and hatred. Heraclitus held matter to be indifferent to any peculiar form, but as it became rarer or more dense, it took the appearance of fire, air, earth and water. Fire, however, he believed to be the elementary principle out of which the others were evolved. This was also the belief of Lucretius. See book i. 783, etc. [27] It is thus the Vulcanists and Neptunians have framed their opposite theories in geology. Phrenology is a modern instance of hasty generalization.--_Ed._ [28] In Scripture everything which concerns the passing interests of the body is called dead; the only living knowledge having regard to the eternal interest of the soul.--_Ed._ [29] In mechanics and the general sciences, causes compound their effects, or in other words, it is generally possible to deduce _à priori_ the consequence of introducing complex agencies into any experiment, by allowing for the effect of each of the simple causes which enter into their composition. In chemistry and physiology a contrary law holds; the causes which they embody generally uniting to form distinct substances, and to introduce unforeseen laws and combinations. The deductive method here is consequently inapplicable, and we are forced back upon experiment. Bacon in the text is hardly consistent with himself, as he admits in the second book the doctrine, to which modern discovery points, of the reciprocal transmutation of the elements. What seemed poetic fiction in the theories of Pythagoras and Seneca, assumes the appearance of scientific fact in the hands of Baron Caynard.--_Ed._