Note 159 — APHORISMS—BOOK II ON THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE, OR THE REIGN OF MAN (continued 3)

Aristotle’s doctrine, that sound takes place when bodies strike the air, which the modern science of acoustics has completely established, was rejected by Bacon in a treatise upon the same subject: “The collision or thrusting of air,” he says, “which they will have to be the cause of sound, neither denotes the form nor the latent process of sound, but is a term of ignorance and of superficial contemplation.” To get out of the difficulty, he betook himself to his theory of spirits, a species of phenomena which he constantly introduces to give himself the air of explaining things he could not understand, or would not admit upon the hypothesis of his opponents.—Ed.