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40 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF * LEARNING. “fv. Pete 
when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may 
perchance be further polished and illustrate and accom- 
modated for use and practice; but it increaseth no more 
in bulk and substance. 
5. Another error which ‘doth succeed that which we 
Jast mentioned, is, that after the distribution of particular 
arts and sciences, men have abandoned universality, or 
philosophia prima ails 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withdrawn themselves too much from the contemplation 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 philo- | 
sophers, Heraclitus gave a just censure, saying, Jen : 
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. 
4. Another error that hath some connexion 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 
