XXXVII

Among Prerogative Instances I will put in the fifteenth place Instances of Divorce, which indicate the separation of natures of most familiar occurrence. They differ from the instances subjoined to the instances of companionship, in that the latter indicate the separation of a nature from some concrete substance with which it is ordinarily in conjunction, while these instances indicate the separation of one nature from another. They differ from instances of the fingerpost, in that they determine nothing, but simply notify the separability of one nature from another. Their use is to detect false forms and to dissipate slight theories suggested by what lies on the surface, and so serve as ballast to the understanding.

For example, let the natures investigated be those four natures which Telesius accounts as messmates and chamber fellows, namely: heat, brightness, rarity, mobility or promptness to motion. We find, however, many instances of divorce between them. For air is rare and mobile, not hot or bright; the moon is bright without heat; boiling water is hot without light; the motion of an iron needle on a pivot is quick and nimble, and yet the body is cold, dense, and opaque; and there are many more of the kind.

Again, let the natures investigated be corporeal nature and natural action. For it seems that natural action is not found except as subsisting in some body. Yet in this case also we shall perhaps be able to find some instance of divorce; such, for example, as magnetic action, by which iron is drawn to the magnet, heavy bodies to the globe of the earth. There may also be added some other operations performed at a distance. For such action takes place both in time, occupying moments not a mere instant of time, and in space, passing through degrees and distances. There is therefore some moment of time, and some distance of space, in which the virtue or action remains suspended between the two bodies which produce the motion. The question therefore is brought to this: whether the bodies which are the limits of the motion dispose or alter the intermediate bodies, so that by a succession of actual contacts the virtue passes from limit to limit, meanwhile subsisting in the intermediate body; or whether there is no such thing, but only the bodies, the virtue, and the distances. In rays of light, indeed, and sounds, and heat, and certain other things acting at a distance, it is probable that the intermediate bodies are disposed and altered, the more so because they require a medium qualified for carrying on the operation. But that magnetic or attractive virtue admits of media without distinction, nor is the virtue impeded in any kind of medium. And if the virtue or action has nothing to do with the intermediate body, it follows that there is a natural virtue or action subsisting for a certain time and in a certain space without a body, since it neither subsists in the limiting nor in the intermediate bodies. And therefore magnetic action may be an instance of divorce between corporeal nature and natural action. To which may be appended as a corollary or advantage not to be omitted that here is a proof furnished by merely human philosophy of the existence of essences and substances separate from matter and incorporeal. For allow that natural virtue and action, emanating from a body, can exist for a certain time and in a certain space altogether without a body, and you are not far from allowing that it can also emanate originally from an incorporeal substance. For corporeal nature appears to be no less requisite for sustaining and conveying natural action than for exciting or generating it.