86 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [l. 2. 
sciences, as of the jurisconsults, the mathematicians, the 
rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are set down some 
small memorials of the schools, authors, and books; and 
so likewise some barren relations touching the invention 
of arts or usages. But a just story of learning, containing 
the antiquities and originals of knowledges and their sects, 
their inventions, their traditions, their diverse administra- 
tions and managings, their flourishings, their oppositions, 
decays, depressions, oblivions, removes, with the causes 
and occasions of them, and all other events concerning 
learning, throughout the ages of the world, I may truly 
affirm to be wanting. The use and end of which work 
I do not so much design for curiosity or satisfaction 
of those that are the.lovers of learning, but chiefly for 
a more serious and grave purpose, which is this in few 
words, that it will make learned men wise in the use and 
administration of learning. For it is not Saint Augustine’s 
nor Saint Ambrose’ works that will make so wise a divine, 
as ecclesiastical history, throughly read and observed ; 
and the same reason is of learning. 
3. History of nature is of three sorts: of nature in 
course; of nature erring or varying; and of nature altered 
or wrought; that is, history of creatures, history of mar- 
vels, and history of arts. The first of these no doubt is 
extant, and that in good perfection: the two latter are 
handled so weakly and unprofitably, as lam moved to 
note them as deficient. For I find no suffi- 
Historia : : 
cient or competent collection of the works of 
Naturae : , 3 : 
. nature which have a digression and deflexion 
Errantis. 
from the ordinary course of generations, pro- 
ductions, and motions; whether they be singularities 
of place and region, or the strange events of time and 
chance, or the effects of yet unknown proprieties, or the 
