tivity. Thus, he says--

"When I speak of forms I mean nothing more than those laws and
determinations of absolute actuality which govern and constitute any
simple nature, as heat, light, weight, in every kind of matter and
subject that is susceptible of them. Thus the form of heat or the form
of light is the same thing as the law of heat or the law of light."[64]
"Matter rather than forms should be the object of our attention, its
configurations and changes of configuration, and simple action, and law
of action or motion; for forms are figments of the human mind, unless
you will call those laws of action forms."[65] "Forms or true
differences of things, which are in fact laws of pure act."[66] "For
though in nature nothing really exists besides individual bodies,
performing pure individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in
philosophy this very law, and the investigation, discovery and
explanation of it, is the foundation as well of knowledge as of
operation. And it is this law, with its clauses, that I mean when I
speak of forms."[67]

Several important conclusions may be drawn from these passages. In the
first place, it is evident that Bacon, like the Atomical school, of whom he
highly approved, had a clear perception and a firm grasp of the _physical_
character of natural principles; his _forms_ are no ideas or abstractions,
but highly general physical properties. Further, it is hinted that these
general qualities may be looked upon as the modes of action of simple
bodies. This fruitful conception, however, Bacon does not work out; and
though he uses the word _cause_, and identifies _form_ with _formal cause_,
yet it is perfectly apparent that the modern notions of cause as dynamical,
and of nature as in a process of flow or development, are foreign to him,
and that in his view of the ultimate problem of science, cause meant _causa
immanens_, or underlying substance, effects were not consequents but
manifestations, and nature was regarded in a purely statical aspect. That
this is so appears even more clearly when we examine his general conception
of the unity, gradation and function of the sciences. That the sciences are
organically connected is a thought common to him and to his distinguished
predecessor Roger Bacon. "I that hold it for a great impediment towards the
advancement and further invention of knowledge, that particular arts and
sciences h