108 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [V. 3- 
rhetoric of deceiving expectation? Is not the delight of 
the quavering upon a stop in music the same with the 
playing of light upon the water? 
Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus. 
Are not the organs of the senses of one kind with the 
organs of reflection, the eye with a glass, the ear with a 
cave or strait, determined and bounded? Neither are 
these only similitudes, as men of narrow observation may 
conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of nature, 
treading or printing upon several subjects or matters. 
This science therefore (as I understand it) I may justly 
report as deficient: for I see sometimes the profounder 
sort of wits, in handling some particular 
Philosophia aroument, will now and then draw a bucket 
- yaa of water out of this well for their present 
scientiarum. US “but-the spring-head thereof seemeth to 
me not to have been visited; being of so 
excellent use both for the disclosing of nature and the 
abridgement of art. 
VI. x. This science being therefore first placed as a 
common parent like unto Berecynthia, which had so 
much heavenly issue, omnes celicolas, omnes supera alia 
tenentes ; we may return to the former distribution of the 
three philosophies, divine, natural, and human. And as 
concerning divine philosophy or natural theology, it is 
that knowledge or rudiment of knowledge concerning 
God, which may be obtained by the contemplation of 
his creatures; which knowledge may be truly termed 
divine in respect of the object, and natural in respect of 
the light. The bounds of this knowledge are, that it 
sufficeth to convince atheism, but not to inform religion: 
and therefore there was never miracle wrought by God 
to convert an atheist, because the light of nature might 
a 
