18: Jointed Instances

18. The instances of the road or the itinerant and jointed instances

⁴¹ These indicate the gradually continued motions of nature.

This[225] species of instances escapes our observation than our senses.

Men are wonderfully indolent on this.

They consult nature in a desultory manner, and at periodic intervals, when bodies have been regularly finished and completed, and not during her work.

Anyone who wanted to examine the talents of an artificer should see him working.

This should be done with nature.

For instance, the first sowing of any seed then:

• how and when the it begins to swell and break and be filled with spirit
• how it begins to burst the bark and push out fibres raising itself slowly
• how it pushes out these fibres, some downward for roots, others upward for the stem, sometimes also creeping laterally,
• etc

The same should be done in observing the hatching of eggs in:

• the process of animation and organization,
• and what parts are formed of the yolk, and what of the white of the egg, and the like. The same may be said of the inquiry into the formation of animals from putrefaction; for it would not be so humane to inquire into perfect and terrestrial animals, by cutting the fœtus from the womb; but opportunities may perhaps be offered of abortions, animals killed in hunting, and the like. Nature, therefore, must, as it were, be watched, as being[226] more easily observed by night than by day: for contemplations of this kind may be considered as carried on by night, from the minuteness and perpetual burning of our watch-light.

The same must be attempted with inanimate objects, which we have ourselves done by inquiring into the opening of liquids by fire. For the mode in which water expands is different from that observed in wine, vinegar, or verjuice, and very different, again, from that observed in milk and oil, and the like; and this was easily seen by boiling them with slow heat, in a glass vessel, through which the whole may be clearly perceived. But we merely mention this, intending to treat of it more at large and more closely when we come to the discovery of the latent process; for it should always be remembered that we do not here treat of things themselves, but merely propose examples.[142]