36 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



popular observation and traducement, and, therefore, are not 

 to be passed over. 



V. (1) The first of these is the extreme affecting of two 

 extremities : the one antiquity, the other novelty ; wherein it 

 seemeth the children of time do take after the nature and 

 malice of the father. For as he devoureth his children, so one 

 of them seeketh to devour and suppress the other ; while an 

 tiquity envieth there should be new additions, and novelty 

 cannot be content to add but it must deface ; surely the advice 

 of the prophet is the true direction in this matter, State 

 super vias antiquas, et mdete qucenam sit via recta ct bona et 

 ambulate in ea. Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men 

 should make a stand thereupon and discover what is the best 

 way ; but when the discovery is well taken, then to make pro 

 gression. And to speak truly, Antiquitas saculi juventu* 

 mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world is 

 ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retro- 

 grado, by a computation backward from ourselves. 



(2) Another error induced by the former is a distrust that 

 anything should be now to be found out, which the world 

 should have missed and passed over so long time : as if the 

 same objection were to be made to time that Lucian maketh 

 to Jupiter and other the heathen gods ; of which he wondereth 

 that they begot so many children in old time, and begot none 

 in his time ; and asketh whether they were become septua- 

 genary, or whether the law Papia, made against old men s 

 marriages, had restrained them. So it seemeth men doubt 

 lest time is become past children and generation ; wherein con 

 trariwise we see commonly the levity and unconstancy of men s 

 judgments, which, till a matter be done, wonder that it can 

 be done ; and as soon as it is done, wonder again that it was 

 no sooner done : as we see in the expedition of Alexander into 

 Asia, which at first was prejudged as a vast and impossible 

 enterprise ; and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy to make no 

 more of it than this, Nil aliud quam bene ausus vana con- 

 temnere. And the same happened to Columbus in the western 

 navigation. But in intellectual matters it is much more 

 common, as may be seen in most of the propositions of Euclid ; 

 which till they be demonstrate, they seem strange to our 

 assent; but being demonstrate, our mind accepteth of them 

 by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak), as if we had known 

 them before. 



(3) Another error, that hath also some affinity with the 

 former, is a conceit that of former opinions or sects after 

 variety and examination the best hath still prevailed and 



