The Advancement of Learning
holy men, and their relics, shrines, chapels and images: which though
they had a passage for a time by the ignorance of the people, the
superstitious simplicity of some and the politic toleration of others
holding them but as divine poesies, yet after a period of time, when the
mist began to clear up, they grew to be esteemed but as old wives’
fables, impostures of the clergy, illusions of spirits, and badges of
Antichrist, to the great scandal and detriment of religion.
(10) So in natural history, we see there hath not been that choice and
judgment used as ought to have been; as may appear in the writings of
Plinius, Cardanus, Albertus, and divers of the Arabians, being fraught
with much fabulous matter, a great part not only untried, but notoriously
untrue, to the great derogation of the credit of natural philosophy with
the grave and sober kind of wits: wherein the wisdom and integrity of
Aristotle is worthy to be observed, that, having made so diligent and
exquisite a history of living creatures, hath mingled it sparingly with
any vain or feigned matter; and yet on the other side hath cast all
prodigious narrations, which he thought worthy the recording, into one
book, excellently discerning that matter of manifest truth, such
whereupon observation and rule was to be built, was not to be mingled or
weakened with matter of doubtful credit; and yet again, that rarities and
reports that seem uncredible are not to be suppressed or denied to the
memory of men.
(11) And as for the facility of credit which is yielded to arts and
opinions, it is likewise of two kinds; either when too much belief is
attributed to the arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The
sciences themselves, which have had better intelligence and confederacy
with the imagination of man than with his reason, are three in number:
astrology, natural magic, and alchemy; of which sciences, nevertheless,
the ends or pretences are noble. For astrology pretendeth to discover
that correspondence or concatenation which is between the superior globe
and the inferior; natural magic pretendeth to call and reduce natural
philosophy from variety of speculations to the magnitude of works; and
alchemy pretendeth to make separation of all the unlike parts of bodies
which in mixtures of natures are incorporate. But the derivations and
prosecutions to these ends, both in the theories and in the practices,
are full of error and vanity; which the great professors themselves have
sought to veil over and conceal by enigmatical writings, and referring
themselves to auricular traditions and such other devices, to save the
credit of impostures. And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that
it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Æsop makes the fable; that,
when he died, told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried
underground in his vineyard; and they digged over all the ground, and
gold they found none; but by reason of their stirring and digging the
mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year
following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to
light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as
well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man’s life.
(12) And as for the overmuch credit that hath been given unto authors in
sciences, in making them dictators, that their words should stand, and
not consuls, to give advice; the damage is infinite that sciences have
received thereby, as the principal cause that hath kept them low at a
stay without growth or advancement. For hence it hath come, that in arts
mechanical the first deviser comes shortest, and time addeth and
perfecteth; but in sciences the first author goeth furthest, and time
leeseth and corrupteth. So we see artillery, sailing, printing, and the
like, were grossly managed at the first, and by time accommodated and
refined; but contrariwise, the philosophies and sciences of Aristotle,
Plato, Democritus, Hippocrates, Euclides, Archimedes, of most vigour at
the first, and by time degenerate and imbased: whereof the reason is no
other, but that in the former many wits and industries have contributed
in one; and in the latter many wits and industries have been spent about
the wit of some one, whom many times they have rather depraved than
illustrated; for, as water will not ascend higher than the level of the
first spring-head from whence it descendeth, so knowledge derived from
Aristotle, and exempted from liberty of examination, will not rise again
higher than the knowledge of Aristotle. And, therefore, although the
position be good, _Oportet discentem credere_, yet it must be coupled
with this, _Oportet edoctum judicare_; for disciples do owe unto masters
only a temporary belief and a suspension of their own judgment till they
be fully instructed, and not an absolute resignation or perpetual
captivity; and therefore, to conclude this point, I will say no more, but
so let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of
authors, be not deprived of his due—which is, further and further to
discover truth. Thus have I gone over these three diseases of learning;
besides the which there are some other rather peccant humours than formed
diseases, which, nevertheless, are not so secret and intrinsic, but that
they fall under a popular observation and traducement, and, therefore,
are not to be passed over.
V. (1) The first of these is the extreme affecting of two extremities:
the one antiquity, the other novelty; wherein it seemeth the children of
time do take after the nature and malice of the father. For as he
devoureth his children, so one of them seeketh to devour and suppress the
other; while antiquity envieth there should be new additions, and novelty
cannot be content to add but it must deface; surely the advice of the
prophet is the true direction in this matter, _State super vias
antiquas_, _et videte quænam sit via recta et bona et ambulate in ea_.
Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand
thereupon and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is
well taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, _Antiquitas
sæculi juventus mundi_. These times are the ancient times, when the
world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient _ordine
retrogrado_, by a computation backward from ourselves.
(2) Another error induced by the former is a distrust that anything
should be now to be found out, which the world should have missed and
passed over so long time: as if the same objection were to be made to
time that Lucian maketh to Jupiter and other the heathen gods; of which
he wondereth that they begot so many children in old time, and begot none
in his time; and asketh whether they were become septuagenary, or whether
the law _Papia_, made against old men’s marriages, had restrained them.
So it seemeth men doubt lest time is become past children and generation;
wherein contrariwise we see commonly the levity and unconstancy of men’s
judgments, which, till a matter be done, wonder that it can be done; and
as soon as it is done, wonder again that it was no sooner done: as we see
in the expedition of Alexander into Asia, which at first was prejudged as
a vast and impossible enterprise; and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy to
make no more of it than this, _Nil aliud quàm bene ausus vana
contemnere_. And the same happened to Columbus in the western
navigation. But in intellectual matters it is much more common, as may
be seen in most of the propositions of Euclid; which till they be
demonstrate, they seem strange to our assent; but being demonstrate, our
mind accepteth of them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak), as
if we had known them before.
(3) Another error, that hath also some affinity with the former, is a
conceit that of former opinions or sects after variety and examination
the best hath still prevailed and suppressed the rest; so as if a man
should begin the labour of a new search, he were but like to light upon
somewhat formerly rejected, and by rejection brought into oblivion; as if
the multitude, or the wisest for the multitude’s sake, were not ready to
give passage rather to that which is popular and superficial than to that
which is substantial and profound for the truth is, that time seemeth to
be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that
which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is
weighty and solid.
(4) Another error, of a diverse nature from all the former, is the
over-early and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods;
from which time commonly sciences receive small or no augmentation. But
as young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a
further stature, so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations,
it is in growth; but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it
may, perchance, be further polished, and illustrate and accommodated for
use and practice, but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance.
(5) Another error which doth succeed that which we last mentioned is,
that after the distribution of particular arts and sciences, men have
abandoned universality, or _philosophia prima_, which cannot but cease
and stop all progression. For no perfect discovery can be made upon a
flat or a level; neither is it possible to discover the more remote and
deeper parts of any science if you stand but upon the level of the same
science, and ascend not to a higher science.
(6) Another error hath proceeded from too great a reverence, and a kind
of adoration of the mind and understanding of man; by means whereof, men
have withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation of nature, and
the observations of experience, and have tumbled up and down in their own
reason and conceits. Upon these intellectualists, which are
notwithstanding commonly taken for the most sublime and divine
philosophers, Heraclitus gave a just censure, saying:—“Men sought truth
in their own little worlds, and not in the great and common world;” for
they disdain to spell, and so by degrees to read in the volume of God’s
works; and contrariwise by continual meditation and agitation of wit do
urge and, as it were, invocate their own spirits to divine and give
oracles unto them, whereby they are deservedly deluded.
(7) Another error that hath some connection with this latter is, that men
have used to infect their meditations, opinions, and doctrines with some
conceits which they have most admired, or some sciences which they have
most applied, and given all things else a tincture according to them,
utterly untrue and improper. So hath Plato intermingled his philosophy
with theology, and Aristotle with logic; and the second school of Plato,
Proclus and the rest, with the mathematics; for these were the arts which
had a kind of primogeniture with them severally. So have the alchemists
made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the furnace; and Gilbertus
our countryman hath made a philosophy out of the observations of a
loadstone. So Cicero, when reciting the several opinions of the nature
of the soul, he found a musician that held the soul was but a harmony,
saith pleasantly, _Hic ab arte sua non recessit_, _&c._ But of these
conceits Aristotle speaketh seriously and wisely when he saith, _Qui
respiciunt ad pauca de facili pronunciant_.
(8) Another error is an impatience of doubt, and haste to assertion
without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of
contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by
the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end
impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a