engender realities out of night. For night and chaos may not unfitly be taken to represent uninformed matter." The doctrine of Aristotle being in this as in other matters followed by the schoolmen, it was a question with them how the words "and the earth was without form," which come immediately after the declaration that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, ought to be understood. For to create the earth is to give it actual existence; how then can it be without form? To this the most satisfactory answer was that the words without form do not imply the absence of substantial form, failing which the earth could have no actual existence, but simply mean that as yet the earth was unadorned and in disorder; a solution in which we see how far they were from supposing that according to Aristotle the first created thing ought to be uninformed matter. They insist on the contrary that the Scripture cannot mean that any created thing can be mere matter: "non enim datur ens actu sine actu."

Aristotle, as I have said, condemns the theogonists in whose system Night is a producing principle,—a remark in which he may refer either to Hesiod or to the Orphic writers, but which probably relates to the former only. In the reason of this condemnation Bacon agrees with him, and yet takes into the myth which he proposes to explain, Aristophanes's fancy that the egg from which Eros came forth was laid by Night. His reason for doing so is that this part of the fable appears to him to relate not to essence but to cognition, that is to the method whereby we may arrive at a knowledge of Eros, or of the fundamental properties of matter. For conclusions obtained by means of affirmatives are, so to speak, brought forth by Light: whereas those which are obtained by negatives and exclusions are the offspring of Night and Darkness. Therefore the egg is laid by Night, seeing that the knowledge of Eros, though it is assuredly attainable, can yet only be attained by exclusions and negatives; that is, to express the same opinion in the language of the Novum Organum, the knowledge of Forms necessarily depends on the Exclusiva. That this method of exclusions must of necessity be ultimately successful is intimated by the myth itself; for the incubation of the pri

'Arist. Metaph. xii. 6.

2 See Brandis's Schol. in Aristot. p. 803., and for the remarks of Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Lobeck, Aglaoph. i. 488.

meval egg is not eternal. In due time the egg is hatched and Eros is made manifest. If it be asked what analogy there is between darkness and the method of exclusions, Bacon's answer is satisfactory, that darkness is as ignorance, and that in employing the method of exclusions we are all along ignorant of that which at any stage of the process still remains unexcluded. It may again be asked why the method of exclusions is the only one whereby Eros may be disclosed,- a question to which Bacon suggests an answer by saying that Democritus did excellently well in teaching that atoms are devoid of all sensible qualities. Bacon's opinion seems therefore to be, that any method but a negative one would necessarily fail, because that which is sought bears no analogy to any of the sensible objects by which we are surrounded. The parable, he says, maintains throughout the principles of heterogeneity and exclusion: meaning by heterogeneity a strongly marked antithesis between the fundamental qualities of matter and the sensible qualities of which we are directly cognisant. In accordance with this he censures Democritus for departing from this principle in giving his atoms the downward motion of gravity and the impulsive motion (motus plage) which belong to ordinary bodies. Not only are atoms and bodies different as touching their qualities, but also in their motions.

In these views, which however do not show either that the method of exclusions is the only one which can succeed or that it will always do so, there is much which deserves attention. They show that Bacon had obtained a deep insight into the principles of the atomic theory. The earlier developments of this theory have always been encumbered by its being thought necessary, in order to explain phenomena, to ascribe to the atoms properties which in reality belong only to the bodies which they compose; that is, by its being thought necessary to break through Bacon's principle of heterogeneity. Thus the atoms have been supposed of definite sizes and figures, thereby resembling other and larger bodies, and to be perfectly hard and unyielding. When freed from these subsidiary hypotheses, the atomic theory becomes a theory of forces only, and of whatever ulterior developments it may be capable, these can only be introduced when it has assumed this form. The speculations of Boscovich do not mark the farthest point to which the atomic theory may be carried, but they were

nevertheless an essential step in advance, and altogether in accordance with what Bacon has here said, though in an obscure and somewhat abrupt manner. "We do well," remarks Leibnitz, "to think highly of Verulam, for his hard sayings have a deep meaning in them :" a judgment which may not improbably have had a particular reference to the views now spoken of. For Leibnitz's own monadism is in effect only an abstract atomic theory: more abstract doubtless than any thing which Bacon had conceived of, but yet a system which might have been derived from that of Democritus by insisting on and developing Bacon's principle of heterogeneity. And again, in a different point of view, it seems not unlikely that Leibnitz perceived an analogy between his own doctrine and that of Bacon. In the earlier part of his philosophical life, Leibnitz was disposed to agree with the opinion common among the reformers of philosophy, that what Aristotle had said of matter, of form, and of mutation, was to be explained by means of magnitude, figure, and motion. This opinion he ascribes to all the reformers of the seventeenth century, mentioning by name Bacon and several others.2 Thirty years afterwards, in giving some account of the history of his opinions, he says that he came to perceive, "que la seule considération d'une masse étendue ne suffisoit pas, et qu'il falloit employer encore la notion de la force, qui est très-intelligible, quoiqu'elle soit du ressort de la Métaphysique." In introducing this notion of force, he conceived that he was rehabilitating the Aristotelian or scholastic philosophy, seeing "que les formes des Anciens ou Entelechies ne sont autre chose que les forces."4 These primitive forces 5 being the constituent forms of substances, he supposed them, with one exception (founded on dogmatic grounds), to have been created at the beginning of the world. The "lex a Deo lata" at the creation "reliquit aliquod sui expressum in rebus vestigium," namely an efficacy, or form, or force, by virtue of which and in accordance with the divine precept all phenomena had been engendered."

3

If we compare these expressions, which contain the fundamental idea of Leibnitz's philosophy, with those which have

The monad, Leibnitz himself remarks, is a metaphysical point, or formal atom. 2 Epist. ad Thomas. p. 48. of Erdmann's edition of Leibnitz's Phil. Works.

3 Système nouveau, p. 124., Erdmann.

4 Lettre à Bouvet, p. 146., Erdmann.

See his De ipsâ Naturâ, p. 156.

Forces primitives, v. Syst. Nouv.

already been quoted from the following tract, we shall I think perceive more than an accidental analogy between them. Leibnitz speaks of the primitive forces impressed by the divine word on created things, "ex quâ series phenomenorum ad primi jussûs præscriptum consequeretur,”—and Bacon of the "lex summa essentiæ et naturæ, vis scilicet primis particulis a Deo indita, ex cujus multiplicatione omnis rerum varietas emergat et confletur." It does not seem improbable that Leibnitz, who in the letter to Thomasius classes Bacon, so far as relates to the present subject, with Gassendi and Descartes, came afterwards to find in Bacon's language hints of the deeper view which he had himself been led to adopt, and which constitutes the point of separation between his system and the Cartesian. This supposition would at least be in accordance with the emphatic manner in which he has contrasted the physical theories of Descartes and Bacon, taking the former as a type of acuteness and the latter of profundity, and asserting that compared with Bacon, Descartes seems to creep along the ground.'

It may not be out of place here to remark that there are other traces of Bacon's influence on Leibnitz. In Erdmann's edition of his philosophical works, we find several fragmentary papers which Leibnitz wrote under the name of Gulielmus Pacidius. The title of one of these is "Gulielmi Pacidii Plus Ultra, sive initia et specimina scientiæ generalis de instauratione et augmentis scientiarum ac de perficiendâ mente rerumque inventione ad publicam fœlicitatem." Plus Ultra was the motto to Bacon's device of a ship sailing through the Pillars of Hercules, and the remainder of the title is both in tone and language clearly Baconian. The work itself was to have concluded with an exhortation "ad viros dignitate doctrinâque egregios de humanâ fœlicitate exiguo tempore, si velimus modo, in immensum augendâ.” 2

Another of these fragments contains some account of himself, or rather of Wilhelmus Pacidius, in which he mentions it as one of the happy incidents of his youth, that when he had perceived the defects of the scholastic philosophy the writings of several of the reformers came into his hands-among which

' Leibnitiana, vol. vi. p. 303., ed. Genev. 1768.-J. S.

2 Leibnitz, ab Erd. p. 89.

he gives the first place to the "consilia magni viri Francisci Baconi Angliæ Cancellarii de augmentis Scientiarum.” 1

To return to the fable of Cupid. After interpreting the statement that all things come from Eros to mean that all phenomena must be referred to the fundamental and originally inherent properties of matter as the first ground of their production, Bacon goes on to say that next to the error of those who make formless matter an original principle, is the error of ascribing secondary qualities to primitive matter. This he expresses by saying that though Eros is endued with personality, he is nevertheless naked, "ita personatus1 ut sit tamen nudus." Those who have committed the error of clothing him have either merely covered him with a veil, or have dressed him up in a tunic, or lastly have wrapped him round with a cloak.

These three errors are respectively the errors of those who have sought to explain everything by the transformations of one element as air or fire,—of those who assume a plurality of elements,—and of those who assume an infinity of first principles (the homœomeria of Anaxagoras), each possessed of specific properties.

Contrasted with these errors is the doctrine that there is one first material principle, "idque fixum et invariabile,” and that all phenomena are to be explained, "per hujusmodi principii magnitudines figuras et positiones,”—a statement which includes along with the old atomic theory every such hypothesis as the Cartesian. By those only who hold this opinion is Eros rightly displayed; they show him as he really is, "nativus et exutus."

In the interval between writing this tract and the Novum Organum Bacon's opinions seem to have undergone some change, as he has there condemned the atomists for asserting the existence of "materia non fluxa;" an obscure phrase, but which appears irreconcilable with the expression which I have just quoted-" fixum et invariabile."

However this may be, Bacon next proceeds to enumerate the different forms of doctrine into which the doctrine of a

'Leibnitz, ab Erd. p. 91.

* The meaning of personatus appears from the phrase Bacon previously uses:

"Cu