The Advancement of Learning
in retribution, and more according to revealed Providence. Because true
history representeth actions and events more ordinary and less
interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness and more
unexpected and alternative variations. So as it appeareth that poesy
serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality and to delectation. And
therefore, it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness,
because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of
things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the
mind unto the nature of things. And we see that by these insinuations
and congruities with man’s nature and pleasure, joined also with the
agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and
estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning
stood excluded.
(3) The division of poesy which is aptest in the propriety thereof
(besides those divisions which are common unto it with history, as
feigned chronicles, feigned lives, and the appendices of history, as
feigned epistles, feigned orations, and the rest) is into poesy
narrative, representative, and allusive. The narrative is a mere
imitation of history, with the excesses before remembered, choosing for
subjects commonly wars and love, rarely state, and sometimes pleasure or
mirth. Representative is as a visible history, and is an image of
actions as if they were present, as history is of actions in nature as
they are (that is) past. Allusive, or parabolical, is a narration
applied only to express some special purpose or conceit; which latter
kind of parabolical wisdom was much more in use in the ancient times, as
by the fables of Æsop, and the brief sentences of the seven, and the use
of hieroglyphics may appear. And the cause was (for that it was then of
necessity to express any point of reason which was more sharp or subtle
than the vulgar in that manner) because men in those times wanted both
variety of examples and subtlety of conceit. And as hieroglyphics were
before letters, so parables were before arguments; and nevertheless now
and at all times they do retain much life and rigour, because reason
cannot be so sensible nor examples so fit.
(4) But there remaineth yet another use of poesy parabolical, opposite to
that which we last mentioned; for that tendeth to demonstrate and
illustrate that which is taught or delivered, and this other to retire
and obscure it—that is, when the secrets and mysteries of religion,
policy, or philosophy, are involved in fables or parables. Of this in
divine poesy we see the use is authorised. In heathen poesy we see the
exposition of fables doth fall out sometimes with great felicity: as in
the fable that the giants being overthrown in their war against the gods,
the earth their mother in revenge thereof brought forth Fame:
“Illam terra parens, ira irritat Deorum,
Extremam, ut perhibent, Cœo Enceladoque soroem,
Progenuit.”
Expounded that when princes and monarchs have suppressed actual and open
rebels, then the malignity of people (which is the mother of rebellion)
doth bring forth libels and slanders, and taxations of the states, which
is of the same kind with rebellion but more feminine. So in the fable
that the rest of the gods having conspired to bind Jupiter, Pallas called
Briareus with his hundred hands to his aid: expounded that monarchies
need not fear any curbing of their absoluteness by mighty subjects, as
long as by wisdom they keep the hearts of the people, who will be sure to
come in on their side. So in the fable that Achilles was brought up
under Chiron, the centaur, who was part a man and part a beast, expounded
ingeniously but corruptly by Machiavel, that it belongeth to the
education and discipline of princes to know as well how to play the part
of a lion in violence, and the fox in guile, as of the man in virtue and
justice. Nevertheless, in many the like encounters, I do rather think
that the fable was first, and the exposition devised, than that the moral
was first, and thereupon the fable framed; for I find it was an ancient
vanity in Chrysippus, that troubled himself with great contention to
fasten the assertions of the Stoics upon the fictions of the ancient
poets; but yet that all the fables and fictions of the poets were but
pleasure and not figure, I interpose no opinion. Surely of these poets
which are now extant, even Homer himself (notwithstanding he was made a
kind of scripture by the later schools of the Grecians), yet I should
without any difficulty pronounce that his fables had no such inwardness
in his own meaning. But what they might have upon a more original
tradition is not easy to affirm, for he was not the inventor of many of
them.
(5) In this third part of learning, which is poesy, I can report no
deficience; for being as a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth,
without a formal seed, it hath sprung up and spread abroad more than any
other kind. But to ascribe unto it that which is due, for the expressing
of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are beholding to
poets more than to the philosophers’ works; and for wit and eloquence,
not much less than to orators’ harangues. But it is not good to stay too
long in the theatre. Let us now pass on to the judicial place or palace
of the mind, which we are to approach and view with more reverence and
attention.
V. (1) The knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above,
and some springing from beneath: the one informed by the light of nature,
the other inspired by divine revelation. The light of nature consisteth
in the notions of the mind and the reports of the senses; for as for
knowledge which man receiveth by teaching, it is cumulative and not
original, as in a water that besides his own spring-head is fed with
other springs and streams. So then, according to these two differing
illuminations or originals, knowledge is first of all divided into
divinity and philosophy.
(2) In philosophy the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God,
or are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted upon himself.
Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges—divine
philosophy, natural philosophy, and human philosophy or humanity. For
all things are marked and stamped with this triple character—the power of
God, the difference of nature and the use of man. But because the
distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that
meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like branches of
a tree that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of
entireness and continuance before it come to discontinue and break itself
into arms and boughs; therefore it is good, before we enter into the
former distribution, to erect and constitute one universal science, by
the name of _philosophia prima_, primitive or summary philosophy, as the
main and common way, before we come where the ways part and divide
themselves; which science whether I should report as deficient or no, I
stand doubtful. For I find a certain rhapsody of natural theology, and
of divers parts of logic; and of that part of natural philosophy which
concerneth the principles, and of that other part of natural philosophy
which concerneth the soul or spirit—all these strangely commixed and
confused; but being examined, it seemeth to me rather a depredation of
other sciences, advanced and exalted unto some height of terms, than
anything solid or substantive of itself. Nevertheless I cannot be
ignorant of the distinction which is current, that the same things are
handled but in several respects. As for example, that logic considereth
of many things as they are in notion, and this philosophy as they are in
nature—the one in appearance, the other in existence; but I find this
difference better made than pursued. For if they had considered
quantity, similitude, diversity, and the rest of those extern characters
of things, as philosophers, and in nature, their inquiries must of force
have been of a far other kind than they are. For doth any of them, in
handling quantity, speak of the force of union, how and how far it
multiplieth virtue? Doth any give the reason why some things in nature
are so common, and in so great mass, and others so rare, and in so small
quantity? Doth any, in handling similitude and diversity, assign the
cause why iron should not move to iron, which is more like, but move to
the loadstone, which is less like? Why in all diversities of things
there should be certain participles in nature which are almost ambiguous
to which kind they should be referred? But there is a mere and deep
silence touching the nature and operation of those common adjuncts of
things, as in nature; and only a resuming and repeating of the force and
use of them in speech or argument. Therefore, because in a writing of
this nature I avoid all subtlety, my meaning touching this original or
universal philosophy is thus, in a plain and gross description by
negative: “That it be a receptacle for all such profitable observations
and axioms as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of
philosophy or sciences, but are more common and of a higher stage.”
(3) Now that there are many of that kind need not be doubted. For
example: Is not the rule, _Si inœqualibus æqualia addas_, _omnia erunt
inæqualia_, an axiom as well of justice as of the mathematics? and is
there not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive
justice, and arithmetical and geometrical proportion? Is not that other
rule, _Quæ in eodem tertio conveniunt_, _et inter se conveniunt_, a rule
taken from the mathematics, but so potent in logic as all syllogisms are
built upon it? Is not the observation, _Omnia mutantur_, _nil interit_,
a contemplation in philosophy thus, that the _quantum_ of nature is
eternal? in natural theology thus, that it requireth the same omnipotency
to make somewhat nothing, which at the first made nothing somewhat?
according to the Scripture, _Didici quod omnia opera_, _quœ fecit Deus_,
_perseverent in perpetuum_; _non possumus eis quicquam addere nec
auferre_. Is not the ground, which Machiavel wisely and largely
discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and
preserve them is to reduce them _ad principia_—a rule in religion and
nature, as well as in civil administration? Was not the Persian magic a
reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature
to the rules and policy of governments? Is not the precept of a
musician, to fall from a discord or harsh accord upon a concord or sweet
accord, alike true in affection? Is not the trope of music, to avoid or
slide from the close or cadence, common with the trope of rhetoric of
deceiving expectation? Is not the delight of the quavering upon a stop
in music the same with the playing of light upon the water?
“Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus.”
Are not the organs of the senses of one kind with the organs of
reflection, the eye with a glass, the ear with a cave or strait,
determined and bounded? Neither are these only similitudes, as men of
narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of
nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters. This
science therefore (as I understand it) I may justly report as deficient;
for I see sometimes the profounder sort of wits, in handling some
particular argument, will now and then draw a bucket of water out of this
well for their present use; but the spring-head thereof seemeth to me not
to have been visited, being of so excellent use both for the disclosing
of nature and the abridgment of art.
VI. (1) This science being therefore first placed as a common parent like