Advancement of Learning 99 



figure to the first seeds of things, and the other did suppose 

 numbers to be the principles and originals of things : and it 

 is true also that of all other Forms, as we understand Forms, 

 it is the most abstracted and separable from matter, and 

 therefore most proper to Metaphysique ; which hath like 

 wise been the cause why it hath been better laboured and 

 inquired than any of the other Forms, which are more 

 immersed in matter. 



For it being the nature of the mind of man, to the extreme 

 prejudice of knowledge, to delight in the spacious liberty 

 of generalities, as in a champain region, and not in the 

 inclosures of particularity; the Mathematics of all other 

 knowledge were the goodliest fields to satisfy that appetite. 

 But for the placing of this science, it is not much material : 

 only we have endeavoured in these our partitions to observe 

 a kind of perspective, that one part may cast light upon 

 another. 



The Mathematics are either pure or mixed. To the Pure 

 Mathematics are those sciences belonging which handle 

 quantity determinate, merely severed from any axioms of 

 natural philosophy; and these are two, Geometry and 

 Arithmetic; the one handling quantity continued, and the 

 other dissevered. 



Mixed hath for subject some axioms or parts of natural 

 philosophy, and considereth quantity determined, as it is 

 auxiliary and incident unto them. For many parts of 

 nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtilty, nor 

 demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommo 

 dated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and 

 intervening of the mathematics ; of which sort are perspec 

 tive, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, enginery, 

 and divers others. 



In the Mathematics I can report no deficience, except it 

 be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use 

 of the Pure Mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure 

 many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if 

 the wit be too dull, they sharpen it ; if too wandering, they 

 fix it ; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that 

 as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in 

 respect it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put itself 

 into all postures ; so in the Mathematics, that use which is 

 collateral and intervenient is no less worthy than that which 



