tient more properly speaking, the Species are propagated like rays, infinite in number as it were. However, this irradiation of the Species from the Agent-part is not in such wise that it goes out from this part, but rather, as stated, it comes from the potentiality of the Patient—and yet too from the virtue and active potentiality of the Agent-part itself. The Agent is like a common point from which lines infinite in number are sent in every direction, and over which lines the Species are propagated like rays. And yet more properly speaking, it is the first part of the Patient which is this point, because as a matter of fact the first origin of the Species is wholly in the first part of the Patient, from whence it is poured out on all sides and in every direction. And so we may speak in this way. The first part of the Patient is like a common centre for an infinite number of lines and rays, and yet a terminus to which they are continued. While the part of the Agent is the centre and terminus at which they touch.
Here he had the problem clearly before his mind: the “place” of the generation of the Species. This “place” is in the Agent, and yet the Species is educed from the Patient—and so more properly speaking the place of generation is in the Patient. And his mind rests secure here in the face of possible inconsistency, because he keeps that one picture before it, for which his statements hold true—the picture of the Agent and the Patient in actual contact. And it is this picture which enables him to lightly make the transition.[1] Within a few pages following he has abandoned this picture and is speaking of the rays which pass along these same lines, but from the Agent to the Patient. The Agent and the Patient are no longer in contact, and between the two a pyramidal cone is conceived to be the sphere within which the action takes place; or rather, there is an indefinite number of cones, whose common base is the Agent, and whose cones are at the surface of the Patient—and the Species originate at the Agent and pass to the Patient. Bacon does not harmonize the two conceptions. But we have already seen how, under a modified emission theory, he may have vaguely felt that there was no inherent contradiction between the two.
In conclusion, it remains for us to inquire, Could Bacon have applied the theory as he intended to do? And a few words will suffice for the reply. In his works as we have them it cannot be said that he had worked out more than the broad outlines of the theory—except in Optics, where following Alhazen he speaks in terms of the emission theory. Accordingly we do not know just how he thought of the applications in detail. But there are indica-
- ↑ Only a few pages preceding (450) his mind has been occupied with a very different picture.
