X. 2] THE, SECOND BOOK. + 135 
conjectural hath made so much the more place to be left 
for imposture. For almost all other arts and sciences 
are judged by acts or masterpieces, as I may term them, 
and not by the successes and events. The lawyer is 
judged by the virtue of his pleading, and not by the issue 
of the cause. The master in the ship is judged by the 
directing his course aright, and not by the fortune of the 
voyage. But the physician, and perhaps the politique, 
hath no particular acts demonstrative of his ability, but 
is judged most by the event; which is ever but as it is 
taken: for who can tell, if a patient die or recover, or if a 
state be preserved or ruined, whether it be art or accident? 
And therefore many times the impostor is prized, and 
the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see [the] weakness 
and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a 
mountebank or witch before a learned physician. And 
therefore the poets were clear-sighted in discerning this 
extreme folly, when they made Ausculapius and Circe bro- 
ther and sister, both children of the sun, as in the verses, 
=A : . 6 
Ipse repertorem medicine talis et artis * 
Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas: 
And again, nl 
Dives inaccessos ubi Solis filia lucos, 8c. ,? 
For in all times, in the opinion of the multitude, witches 
and old women and impostors have had a competition 
with physicians. And what followeth? Even this, that 
physicians say to themselves, as Salomon expresseth it 
upon an higher occasion, J/ zt defal fo me as befalleth to 
the fools, why should I labour to be more wise? And there- 
fore I cannot much blame physicians, that they use 
commonly to intend some other art or practice, which 
they fancy, more than their profession. For you shall 
have of them antiquaries, poets, humanists, statesmen, 
& 
