Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Whatever therefore serves to exclude them may justly be reckoned among things of general use. To this head belong the material and thickness of the vessels in which the bodies are placed on which we are going to operate; also the perfect stopping up of vessels by consolidation and lutum sapientiæ, as the chemists call it.

Also the closing in of substances by liquids poured on the outside is a thing of very great use, as when they pour oil on wine or juices of herbs, which spreading over the surface like a lid preserves them excellently from the injury of the air. Nor are powders bad things; for though they contain air mixed up with them, they yet repel the force of the body of air round about, as we see in the preservation of grapes and other fruits in sand and flour.

Thus all things with us tend to rarefaction, and desiccation, and consumption; nothing hardly to condensation and inteneration except by mixtures and methods that may be called spurious.

Besides things which are cold to the touch, there are found others having the power of cold, which also condense, but which seem to act on the bodies of animals only, and hardly on others.

To examine them thoroughly would be premature, till the forms of things and the configurations of bodies have been further investigated and brought to light.

Nor can we have much hope of discovering the consents of things before the discovery of forms and simple configurations.

The broader and more general consents of things are not, however, quite so obscure.

Yet these two quaternions or great tribes of things (each within its own limits) differ immensely in quantity of matter and density, but agree very well in configuration; as appears in numerous cases.

And as in matters solid and true I aspire to the ultimate and supreme, so do I forever hate all things vain and tumid, and do my best to discard them.

But since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things — no wonder that it is everywhere sprinkled and illustrated with speculations and experiments in nature, as examples of the art I teach.