As for the possibility, they are ill discoverers that think there is
no land, when they can see nothing but sea. But it is manifest that
Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation
situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object
of knowledge; but lost the real fruit of his opinion, by considering
of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and
determined by matter; and so turning his opinion upon theology,
wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected. But if any man
shall keep a continual watchful and severe eye upon action,
operation, and the use of knowledge, he may advise and take notice
what are the forms, the disclosures whereof are fruitful and
important to the state of man. For as to the forms of substances
(man only except, of whom it is said, Formavit hominem de limo
terrae, et spiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitae, and not as of
all other creatures, Producant aquae, producat terra), the forms of
substances I say (as they are now by compounding and transplanting
multiplied) are so perplexed, as they are not to be inquired; no
more than it were either possible or to purpose to seek in gross the
forms of those sounds which make words, which by composition and
transposition of letters are infinite.
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