34 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



wrought by martyrs, hermits, or monks of the desert, and 

 other holy men, and their relics, shrines, chapels and images : 

 which though they had a passage for a time by the ignorance 

 of the people, the superstitious simplicity of some and the 

 politic toleration of others holding them but as divine poesies, 

 yet after a period of time, when the mist began to clear up, 

 they grew to be esteemed but as old wives fables, impostures 

 of the clergy, illusions of spirits, and badges of Antichrist, to 

 the great scandal and detriment of religion. 



(10) So in natural history, we see there hath not been that 

 choice and judgment used as ought to have been ; as may 

 appear in the writings of Plinius, Cardanus, Albertus, and 

 divers of the Arabians, being fraught with much fabulous 

 matter, a great part not only untried, but notoriously untrue, 

 to the great derogation of the credit of natural philosophy 

 with the grave and sober kind of wits : wherein the wisdom 

 and integrity of Aristotle is worthy to be observed, that, 

 having made so diligent and exquisite a history of living 

 creatures, hath mingled it sparingly with any vain or feigned 

 matter; and yet on the other side hath cast all prodigious 

 narrations, which he thought worthy the recording, into one 

 book, excellently discerning that matter of manifest truth, 

 such whereupon observation and rule was to be built, was not 

 to be mingled or weakened with matter of doubtful credit , 

 and yet again, that rarities and reports that seem uncredibie 

 are not to be suppressed or denied to the memory of men. 



(11) And as for the facility of credit which is yielded to 

 arts and opinions, it is likewise of two kinds ; either when 

 too much belief is attributed to the arts themselves, or to 

 certain authors in any art. The sciences themselves, which 

 have had better intelligence and confederacy with the imagina 

 tion of man than with his reason, are three in number : 

 astrology, natural magic, and alchemy ; of which sciences, 

 nevertheless, the ends or pretences are noble. For astrology 

 pretendeth to discover that correspondence or concatenation 

 which is between the superior globe and the inferior ; natural 

 magic pretendeth to call and reduce natural philosophy from 

 variety of speculations to the magnitude of works ; and alchemy 

 pretendeth to make separation of all the unlike parts of bodies 

 which in mixtures of natures are incorporate. But the de 

 rivations and prosecutions to these ends, both in the theories 

 and in the practices, are full of error and vanity ; which the 

 great professors themselves have sought to veil over and con 

 ceal by enigmatical writings, and referring themselves to 

 auricular traditions and such other devices, to save the credit 



