32 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [IV.5. 
agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of 
learning which are extant in their books. For the wit 
d mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the 
ntemplation of the creatures of God, worketh accord- 
ng to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work 
upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it. is 
endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs $f learning, 
admirable for the fineness.of thread and and work, but of 
o substance or profit. 
‘6. This same unprofitable subtility or curiosity is of 
’ two sorts; either in the subject itself that they handle, 
when it is a fruitless speculation or controversy (whereof 
there are no small number both in divinity and philo- 
sophy), or in the manner or method of handling of a 
knowledge, whictf amongst them was this ; upotevery 
particular position or assertion to frame objections, and 
to those objections, solutions; which solutions were for 
the most part not confutations, but distinctions: whereas 
indeed the smength of all scienges is, as the strength of 
the old man’s faggot, in the Bétid For the harmony ofa 
science, supporting each part the other, is and ought to 
be the true and brief confutation and suppression of all 
the smaller sort of objections, But, on the other side, if 
you take out every axiom, as the sticks of the faggot, one 
by one, you may quarrel with them and bend them and 
break them at your pleasure: so that as was said of 
Seneca, Verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera, so a 
man may truly say of the schoolmen, Questionum minutits 
setentiarum franguni soliditatem., For were it not better 
for a man in a fair room to set up one great light, or 
branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with 
a small watch candle into every corner? | And such is 
their method, that rests not so much upon evidence of 
