The physical and metaphysical works of Lord Bacon : including the Advancement of learning and Novum organum / edited by Joseph Devey.

  • Francis Bacon
Date:
1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physical and metaphysical works of Lord Bacon : including the Advancement of learning and Novum organum / edited by Joseph Devey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    153/608 (page 141)
    CHAP. IV.] FINAL CAUSES, HOW ABUSED. J kind of knowledge, though in a more divine manner: “Non arctabuntur gressus tui, et currens non habebis offendiculum.”b Thus denoting that the paths of wisdom are not liable to straits and perplexities. The second part of metaphysics, is the inquiry of final causes, which we note not as wanting, but as ill-placed; these causes being usually sought in physics, not in metaphysics, to the great prejudice of philosophy ; for the treating of final causes in physics has driven out the inquiry of physical ones, and made men rest in specious and shadowy causes, without , ever searching in earnest after such as are real and truly physical. And this was not only done by Plato, who con- stantly anchors upon this shore j but by Aristotle, Galen, and others, who frequently introduce such causes as these : “ The hairs of the eyelids are for a fence to the sight.® The bones for pillars whereon to build the bodies of animals. The leaves of trees are to defend the fruit from the sun and wind. The clouds are designed for watering the earth,” &c. All which are properly alleged in metaphysics ; but in physics are impertinent, and as remoras to the ship, that hinder the sciences from holding on their course of improve- ment, and introducing a neglect of searching after physical causes. And therefore the natural philosophies of Democritus and others, who allow no God or mind in the frame of things, but attribute the structure of the universe to infinite essays and trials of nature, or what they call fate or fortune, and assigned the causes of particular things to the necessity of matter without any intermixture of final causes, seem, so far as we can judge from the remains of their philosophy, much more solid, and to have gone deeper into nature, with regard to physical causes, than the philosophy of Aristotle or Plato; and this only because they never meddled with final causes, which the others were perpetually inculcating. Though in this respect Aristotle is more culpable than Plato, as banish- ing God,d the fountain of final causes, and substituting nature b Prov. iv. 12. c Cf. e. y. Arist. Phvs. ii. 8. d From the text it must not be judged that Aristotle invested nature with the general powers usually attributed to a divine intelligence, in designing and executing her various ends with wisdom and precision, but only that he regarded nature as an active and intelligent principle per- forming her agencies by means palpable to herseli, yet according to thr laws and faculties conferred upon her by the prime mover of things. Th< il