Page 415 - The Grotesque Children's Book

are produced, the object of their contemplation and inquiry. For the former tend to
discourse, the latter to works. Nor is there any value in those vulgar distinctions of
motion which are observed in the received system of natural philosophy, as
generation, corruption, augmentation, diminution, alteration, and local motion.
What they mean no doubt is there are twenty-seven Prerogative Instances;
namely, Solitary Instances; Migratory Instances; Striking Instances; Clandestine
Instances; Constitutive Instances; Conformable Instances; Singular Instances;
Deviating Instances; Bordering Instances; Instances of Power; Instances of
Companionship and of Enmity; Subjunctive Instances; Instances of Alliance;
Instances of the Fingerpost; Instances of Divorce; Instances of the Door;
Summoning Instances; Instances of the Road; Instances Supplementary;
Dissecting Instances; Instances of the Rod; Instances of the Course; Doses of
Nature; Instances of Strife; Intimating Instances; Polychrest Instances; Magical
Instances. Now the use of these instances, wherein they excel common instances,
is found either in the Informative part or in the Operative, or in both. As regards
the Informative, they assist either the senses or the understanding: the senses, as
the five Instances of the Lamp: the understanding, either by hastening the
Exclusion of the Form, as Solitary Instances;—or by narrowing and indicating
more nearly the Affirmative of the Form, as Instances Migratory, Striking, of
Companionship, and Subjunctive;—or by exalting the understanding and leading
it to genera and common natures; either immediately, as Instances Clandestine,
Singular, and of Alliance; or in the next degree, as Constitutive; or in the lowest,
as Conformable;—or by setting the understanding right when led astray by habit,
as Deviating Instances;—or by leading it to the Great Form or Fabric of the
Universe, as Bordering Instances;—or by guarding it against false forms and
causes, as Instances of the Fingerpost and of Divorce. In the Operative Part, they
either point out, or measure, or facilitate practice. They point it out, by showing
with what we should begin, that we may not go again over old ground, as
Instances of Power; or to what we should aspire if means be given, as Intimating
Instances. The four Mathematical Instances measure practice: Polychrest and
Magical Instances facilitate it. Again out of these twenty-seven instances there
are some of which we must make a collection at once, as I said above, without
waiting for the particular investigation of natures. Of this sort are Instances
Conformable, Singular, Deviating, Bordering, of Power, of the Dose, Intimating,
Polychrest, and --”

Pandolfo broke off again. “Well, I’m sorry. I’m not following any of this. Are you? It
appears to go on....” Pandolfo flipped some pages, and more pages. “Ehhh -- there’s some
hundred pages of this apparently! That’s what we get for locking up a man as long as we have. I
might become an advocate for shorter periods of incarceration if shorter testimony is the result!”

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