oe een a ee ee 
i ae ar I oor 
art 
XII. 3.] THE SECOND BOOK. 153 
their opinions, rather than in their true use and service. 
Certainly it is a thing may touch a man with a religious ~ 
wonder, to see how the footsteps of seducement are the 
very same in divine and human truth: for as in divine 
truth man cannot endure to become as a child; so in 
human, they reputed the attending the inductions (whereof 
we speak) as if it were a second infancy or childhood. 
4. Thirdly, allow some principles or axioms were rightly 
induced, yet nevertheless certain it is that middle propos- 
itions cannot be deduced from them in subject of nature 
by syllogism, that is, by touch and reduction of them to 
principles in a middle term. It is true that in sciences, 
popular, as moralities, laws, and the like, yea, and divinity | 
(because it pleaseth God to apply himself to the capacity of | 
the simplest), that form may have use; and in natural phi-| 
losophy likewise, by way of argument or satisfactory reason, | 
Que assensum partt, operts effeta est: but the subtilty of 
nature and operations will not be enchained in those bonds. | 
For arguments consist of propositions, and propositions of 
words, and words are but the current tokens or marks 
of popular notions of things; which notions, if they be 
grossly and variably collected out of particulars, it is not 
the laborious examination either of consequences or argu- 
ments, or of the truth of propositions, that can ever cor- 
rect that error, being (as the physicians speak) in the first 
digestion. And therefore it was not without cause, that so 
many excellent philosophers became Sceptics and Aca- 
demics, and denied any certainty of knowledge or com- 
prehension; and held opinion that the knowledge of man 
extended only to appearances and probabilities. It is true 
that in Socrates it was supposed to be but a form of irony, 
Sctenttam dissimulando simulavit: for he used to disable 
his knowledge, to the end to enhance his knowledge: like 
