36 Bacon 



learning, but have given also occasion to the traducement 

 thereof : wherein if I have been too plain, it must be remem 

 bered, fidelia vulnera amantis, sed dolosa oscula malignantis* 

 This, I think, I have gained, that I ought to be the better 

 believed in that which I shall say pertaining to commenda 

 tion; because I have proceeded so freely in that which 

 concerneth censure. And yet I have no purpose to enter 

 into a laudative of learning, or to make a hymn to the 

 Muses; (though I am of opinion that it is long since their 

 rites were duly celebrated:) but my intent is, without 

 varnish or amplification justly to weigh the dignity of 

 knowledge in the balance with other things, and to take 

 the true value thereof by testimonies and arguments divine 

 and human. 



II. i. First therefore let us seek the dignity of knowledge 

 in the archetype or first platform, which is in the attributes 

 jmcLactsj)f God, as far as they are revealed to man and 

 may be observed^ with sobriety : wherein we may not seek 

 it by the name of Learning ; for all Learning is Knowledge 

 acquired, and all knowledge in God is original : and there 

 fore we must look for it by another name, that of Wisdom 

 or Sapience, as the Scriptures call it. 



It is so then, that in the wnrfo of thp rrp^tjnn WP see a 

 double emanation of Virtue from God; the one referring 

 more properly to Power, the other to Wisdom; the one 

 expressed in making the subsistence of the matter, and the 

 other in disposing the beauty of the form. This being 

 supposed, it is to be observed that for anything which 

 appeareth in the history of the creation, the confused mass 

 and matter of Heaven and Earth was made in a moment ; 

 and the order and disposition of that chaos or mass was 

 the work of six days; such a note of difference it pleased 

 God to put upon the works of Power, and the works of Wis 

 dom ; wherewith concurreth, that in the former it is not set 

 down that God said, Let there be heaven and earth, as it is 

 set down of the works following; but actually, that God 

 made Heaven and Earth: the one carrying the style of a 

 Manufacture, and the other of a Law, Decree, or Counsel. 



To proceed to that which is next in order from God, to 



very commonly used with more nominatives than one, and even 

 with plural nouns, as here. 

 1 Prov. xxvii. 6. 



