228 Francis Bacon.

the least thing." And Newton admits, "The cause
of gravity I did not pretend to know." "To ask
what gravity is, is - to mistake the last, perhaps un-
attainable, step for the first;" and the attempts to
explain it by elastic ethers or Cartesian vortices have
always been open to the charge of " obscuruni per ob-
scurius." When Bacon, after praising Galileo's optical
instruments as skiffs or barks that opened a new com-
merce with the heavens, objects to his experiments
•stopping short with a few discoveries, he shows his
want of appreciation of the limits of human power, and
of the modesty 'of a true discoverer. His own aim was
" to storm and occupy the citadels of things," and find
their Forms. But Causes are not "Forms." "The
laws and determinations of actuality" are beyond our
reach, and no inquiry into " the divisions and veins
of Nature " would enable us to attain them. Nor can
we by any means " be freed from the common course
of Nature, and expanded to new modes of operation."
In the ' Organum' it is assumed that the ultimate cause
of any quality will always be single—i.d.9 that it will
always have one Form; but, as far as analysis has been
able to go, this is not the fact; and Bacon, though
('JSTovum Organum/ ii. 17) anticipating the objection
that forms may mix and combine things heterogeneous,
fails to meet it by the mere assertion that we are " held
in captivity by custom." Substances cannot always be
resolved into an aggregation of simple elements: nor
movements, to all appearance identical, be referred to
the same sources, for the same effect is not always
produced by the same cause: it may bo the product of
a-\~/) — ('., or x + // - c. Bacon neglected to consider tlio