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Excerpt from The Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. 16: Lord Chancellor of England
The foundation position is, that "All tangible bodies contain a spirit enveloped with the grosser body. There is no known body, in the upper parts of the earth, without its spirit, whether it be generated by the attenuating and concocting power of the celestial warmth, or otherwise; for the pores of tangible bodies are not a vacuum, but either contain air, or the peculiar spirit of the substance; and this not a vis, an energy, or a fiction, but a real, subtile, and invisible, and, therefore, neglected body, circumscribed by place and dimension."
This doctrine is thus stated in the Excursion:
"To every form of being is assigned
An active principle, howe'er removed
From sense and observation; it subsists
In all things, in all natures, in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, and every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters, and the invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing or with evil mixed:
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude: from link to link
It circulates, the soul of all the worlds."
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