[50] It is curious to compare with both Hume and Bacon a brief dictum of S. T. Coleridge. Biog. Lit., last chapter. "Poor unlucky Metaphysics! And what are they? A single sentence expresses the object and thereby the contents of this science. [Greek: Gnôthi seauton]: et Deum quantum licet et in Deo omnia scibis. Know thyself: and so shalt thou know God, as far as is permitted to a creature, and in God all things. Surely there is a strange--nay, rather a too natural--aversion in many to know themselves." "People," says Guesses at Truth, "can seldom brook contradiction, except within themselves." [51] Compare Advancement. B. II. with De Augmentis. B. III. Chap. iii. [52] De Augmentis. B. III. Chap. iv. [53] Advancement. B. II. (Ed. Basil Montague, Vol. II. p. 134). It is generally an advantage to quote from the enlarged Treatise, the De Augmentis, but in some places the Advancement is more simple and more full. [54] De Augmentis. B. III. Chap. iv. init. [55] De Augmentis. B. III. Chap. iv. Ellis and Spedding, iv. 362. [56] "The cone and vertical point" itself is "the work which God worketh,"--("summariam nempe Naturæ legem")--and "it may fairly be doubted whether man's inquiry can attain to it. But these three are the true stages of knowledge." De Augmentis, as before. So too in his _Valerius_ he speaks of this "highest generality of motion or summary law of Nature" as reserved by God "within His own curtain." [57] The great thinker speaks of it as made up in part "of the common principles and axioms which are promiscuous and indifferent to several Sciences;" in part "of the inquiry touching the operation of the relative and adventitious conditions of Essences, as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility, and the rest." These he terms "Transcendentals," and they form a highest kind of philosophical arrangements, "with this distinction and provision, that they be handled as they have efficiency in Nature and not logically." His instances of common principles show how very vaguely this idea of the first division floated before his mind. Some of them are axioms mathematically certain and true in more than one province of philosophy, others are generalized truths obtained by experience or by comparison of objects diverse in appearance, but to his mind identical or very similar. Among these latter occurs his celebrated saying, that "the delight of the quavering upon a stop in music is the same with the playing of light upon the water";--a thought that haunts us by the seaside and on the shore of mountain lakes while listening to some sweet voice or clear-toned instrument. From his philosophical arrangements Bacon takes away inquiries into the One, the Good, and the Divine, and assigns them to Natural Theology. [58] Translation of the De Augmentis in Ellis and Spedding. Vol. iv. p. 346. [59] Nov. Org. E. and S., iv. 120. [60] De Augmentis. E. and S., iv. 362.