CHAPTER VI.

OF METHOD.

1. Method and science defined.-2. It is more easily known concerning singular, than universal things, that they are; and contrarily, it is more easily known concerning universal, than singular things, why they are, or what are their causes.— 3. What it is philosophers seek to know.-4. The first part, by which principles are found out, is purely analytical.-5. The highest causes, and most universal in every kind, are known by themselves.-6. Method from principles found out, tending to science simply, what it is.-7. That method of civil and natural science, which proceeds from sense to principles, is analytical; and again, that, which begins at principles, is synthetical.8. The method of searching out, whether any thing propounded be matter or accident.-9. The method of seeking whether any accident be in this, or in that subject.-10. The method of searching after the cause of any effect propounded.-11. Words serve to invention, as marks; to demonstration, as signs.— 12. The method of demonstration is synthetical.-13. Definitions only are primary and universal propositions.-14. The nature and definition of a definition.-15. The properties of a definition. -16. The nature of a demonstration.-17. The properties of a demonstration, and order of things to be demonstrated.-18. -The faults of a demonstration.-19. Why the analytical method of geometricians cannot be treated of in this place.

I.

FOR the understanding of method, it will be necessary for me to repeat the definition of philosophy, delivered above (Chap. 1, art. 2,) in this manner, Philosophy is the knowledge we acquire, by true ratiocination, of appearances, or apparent effects, from the knowledge we have of some possible production or generation of the same; and of such production, as has been or may be, from the knowledge we have of the effects. METHOD, therefore, in the study of philosophy, is the shortest way of finding out effects by their known causes, or of causes by their known effects. But we are then said to know

any effect, when we know that there be causes of the same, and in what subject those causes are, and in what subject they produce that effect, and in what manner they work the same. And this is the science of causes, or, as they call it, of the diót. All other science, which is called the r, is either perception by sense, or the imagination, or memory remaining after such perception.1

The first beginnings, therefore, of knowledge, are the V phantasms of sense and imagination; and that there be such phantasms we know well enough by nature; but to know why they be, or from what causes they proceed, is the work of ratiocination; which consists (as is said. above, in the Ist Chapter, Art. 2) in composition, and division or resolution. There is therefore no method, by which we find out the causes of things, but is either compositive or resolutive, or partly compositive, and partly resolutive. And the resolutive is commonly called analytical method, as the compositive is called synthe!ical.

2. It is common to all sorts of method, to proceed from known things to unknown; and this is manifest from the cited definition of philosophy. But in knowledge by sense, the whole object is more known, than any part thereof; as when we see a man, the conception or

1 Compare above Ch. I, Note 1, also the following from Human Nature, (M. IV, 27). "There be two kinds of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original, and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding. Both of these sorts are but experience; the former being the experience of the effects of things that work upon us from without, and the latter experience men have from the proper use of names in language: and all experience being, as I have said, but remembrance, all knowledge is remembrance."

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whole idea of that man is first or more known, than the particular ideas of his being figurate, animate, and rational; that is, we first see the whole man, and take notice of his being, before we observe in him those other particulars. And therefore in any knowledge of the r, or that any thing is, the beginning of our search is from the whole idea; and contrarily, in our knowledge of the Stórt, or of the causes of any thing, that is, in the sciences, we have more knowledge of the causes of the parts than of the whole. For the cause of the whole is compounded of the causes of the parts; but it is necessary that we know the things that are to be compounded, before we can know the whole compound. Now, by parts, I do not here mean parts of the thing itself, but parts of its nature; as, by the parts of man, I do not understand his head, his shoulders, his arms, &c. but his figure, quantity, motion, sense, reason, and the like; which accidents being compounded or put together, constitute the whole nature of man, but not the man himself. And this is the meaning of that common saying, namely, that some things are more known to us, others more known to nature; for I do not think that they, which so distinguish, mean that something is known to nature, which is known to no man; and therefore, by those things, that are more known to us, we are to understand things we take notice of by our senses, and, by more known to nature, those we acquire the knowledge of by reason; for in this sense it is, that the whole, that is, those things that have universal names, (which, for brevity's sake, I call universal) are more known to us than the parts, that is, such things as have names less universal, (which I therefore call singular); and the causes of the parts are more known to nature than the cause of the whole; that is, universals than singulars.

3. In the study of philosophy, men search after science either simply or indefinitely; that is, to know as much as they can, without propounding to themselves any limited question; or they inquire into the cause of some determined appearance, or endeavour to find out the certainty of something in question, as what is the cause of light, of heat, of gravity, of a figure propounded, and the like; or in what subject any propounded accident is inherent; or what may conduce most to the generation of some propounded effect from many accidents; or in what manner particular causes ought to be compounded for the production of some certain effect. Now, according to this variety of things in question, sometimes the analytical method is to be used, and sometimes the synthetical.

4. But to those that search after science indefinitely, which consists in the knowledge of the causes of all things, as far forth as it may be attained, (and the causes of singular things are compounded of the causes of universal or simple things) it is necessary that they know the causes of universal things, or of such accidents as are common to all bodies, that is, to all matter, before they can know the causes of singular things, that is, of those accidents by which one thing is distinguished from another. And, again, they must know what those universal things are, before they can know their causes. Moreover, seeing universal things are contained in the nature of singular things, the knowledge of them is to be acquired by reason, that is, by resolution. For example, if there be propounded a conception or idea of some singular thing, as of a square, this square is to resolved into a plain, terminated with a certain number of equal and straight lines and right angles. For by this resolution we have these things universal or agreeable to all

matter, namely, line, plain, (which contains superficies) terminated, angle, straightness, rectitude, and equality; and if we can find out the causes of these, we may compound them altogether into the cause of a square. Again, if any man propound to himself the conception of gold, he may, by resolving, come to the ideas of solid, visible, heavy, (that is, tending to the centre of the earth, or downwards) and many other more universal than gold itself; and these he may resolve again, till he come to such things as are most universal. And in this manner, by resolving continually, we may come to know what those things are, whose causes being first known severally, and afterwards compounded, bring us to the knowledge of singular things. I conclude, therefore, that the method of attaining to the universal knowledge of things, is purely analytical.

5. But the causes of universal things (of those, at least, that have any cause) are manifest of themselves, or (as they say commonly) known to nature; so that they need no method at all; for they have all but one universal cause, which is motion. For the variety of all figures arises out of the variety of those motions by which they are made; and motion cannot be understood to have any other cause besides motion; nor has the variety of those things we perceive by sense, as of colours, sounds, savours, &c. any other cause than motion, residing partly in the objects that work upon our senses, and partly in ourselves, in such manner, as that it is manifestly some kind of motion, though we cannot, without ratiocination, come to know what kind. For though many cannot understand till it be in some sort demonstrated to them, that all mutation consists in motion; yet this happens not from any obscurity in the thing itself, (for it is not intelligible that anything can depart either from rest, or from the