THE FIRST BOOK. 31 



condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philo 

 sophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution. For hereof 

 we have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, 

 and of Plato also in some degree ; and hereof likewise there is 

 great use, for surely, to the severe inquisition of truth and 

 the deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance ; 

 because it is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, and 

 quencheth the desire of further search before we come to a 

 just period. But then if a man be to have any use of such 

 knowledge in civil occasions, of conference, counsel, persua 

 sion, discourse, or the like, then shall he find it prepared to 

 his hands in those authors which write in that manner. But 

 the excess of this is so justly contemptible, that as Hercules, 

 when he saw the image of Adonis, Venus minion, in a temple, 

 said in disdain, Nil sacri es ; so there is none of Hercules 

 followers in learning that is, the more severe and laborious 

 sort of inquirers into truth but will despise those delicacies 

 and affectations, as indeed capable of no divineness. And thus 

 much of the first disease or distemper of learning. 



(5) The second which followeth is in nature worse than the 

 former : for as substance of matter is better than beauty of 

 words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words : 

 wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not 

 only proper for those times, but prophetical for the times 

 following ; and not only respective to divinity, but extensive 

 to all knowledge : Devita prof anas vocum novitates, et oppo- 

 sitiones falsi nominis sciential. For he assigneth two marks 

 and badges of suspected and falsified science : the one, the 

 novelty and strangeness of terms -, the other, the strictness of 

 positions, which of necessity doth induce oppositions, and so 

 questions and altercations. Surely, like as many substances 

 in nature which are solid do putrify and corrupt into worms ; 

 so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy 

 and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and 

 (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have in 

 deed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of 

 matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learn 

 ing did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp 

 and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety 

 of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few 

 authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were 

 shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing 

 little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great 

 quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto 

 j us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their 



