was anciently defined to be rerum divinarum et humanarum scientia) there is ever a choice of means.  For physical causes give light to new invention in simili materia.  But whosoever knoweth any form, knoweth the utmost possibility of superinducing that nature upon any variety of matter; and so is less restrained in operation, either to the basis of the matter, or the condition of the efficient; which kind of knowledge Solomon likewise, though in a more divine sense, elegantly describeth:  non arctabuntur gressus tui, et currens non habebis offendiculum.  The ways of sapience are not much liable either to particularity or chance.

(7) The second part of metaphysic is the inquiry of final causes, which I am moved to report not as omitted, but as misplaced.  And yet if it were but a fault in order, I would not speak of it; for order is matter of illustration, but pertaineth not to the substance of sciences.  But this misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves.  For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery.  For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes.  For to say that “the hairs of the eyelids are for a quickset and fence about the sight;” or that “the firmness of the skins and hides of living creatures is to defend them from the extremities of heat or cold;” or that “the bones are for the columns or beams, whereupon the frames of the bodies of living creatures are built;” or that “the leaves of trees are for protecting of the fruit;” or that “the clouds are for watering of the earth;” or that “the solidness of the earth is for the station and mansion of living creatures;” and the like, is well inquired and collected in metaphysic, but in physic they are impertinent.  Nay, they are, indeed, but remoras and hindrances to stay and slug the ship from further sailing; and have brought this to pass, that the search of the physical causes hath been neglected and passed in silence.  And, therefore, the natural philosophy of Democritus and some others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or proofs of Nature, which they term fortune, seemeth to me (as far as I can judge by the recital and fragments which remain unto us) in particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; whereof both intermingled final causes, the one as a part of theology, and the other as a part of logic, which were the favourite studies respectively of both those persons; not because those