68 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



revelation of oracle and sense be diverse. So as theology con- 

 sisteth also of history of the Church ; of parables, which is 

 divine poesy ; and of holy doctrine or precept. For as for that 

 part which seemeth supernumerary, which is prophecy, it is 

 but divine history, which hath that prerogative over human, as 

 the narration may be before the fact as well as after. 



(2) History is natural, civil, ecclesiastical, and literary ; 

 whereof the first three I allow as extant, the fourth I note as 

 deficient. For no man hath propounded to himself the general 

 state of learning to be described and represented from age to 

 age, as many have done the works of Nature, and the state, 

 civil and ecclesiastical ; without which the history of the world 

 seemeth to me to be as the statue of Polyphemus with his eye 

 out, that part being wanting which doth most show the spirit 

 and life of the person. And yet I am not ignorant that in 

 divers particular sciences, as of the jurisconsults, the mathema 

 ticians, the rhetoricians, the philosophers, there are set down 

 some small memorials of the schools, authors, and books ; and 

 so likewise some barren relations touching the invention of 

 arts or usages. But a just story of learning, containing the 

 antiquities and originals of knowledges and their sects, their 

 inventions, their traditions, their diverse administrations and 

 managings, their flourishings, their oppositions, decays, de 

 pressions, oblivions, removes, with the causes and occasions of 

 them, and all other events concerning learning, throughout 

 the ages of the world, I may truly affirm to be wanting ; the 

 use and end of which work I do not so much design for curiosity 

 or satisfaction of those that are the lovers of learning, but 

 chiefly for a more serious and grave purpose, which is this in 

 few words, that it will make learned men wise in the use and 

 administration of learning. For it is not Saint Augustine s nor 

 Saint Ambrose s works that will make so Avise a divine as 

 ecclesiastical history thoroughly read and observed, and the 

 same reason is of learning. 



(3) History of Nature is of three sorts ; of Nature in course, 

 of Nature erring or varying, and of Nature altered or wrought ; 

 that is, history of creatures, history of marvels, and history of 

 arts. The first of these no doubt is extant, and that in good 

 perfection ; the two latter are handled so weakly and unprofit- 

 ably as I am moved to note them as deficient. For I find no 

 sufficient or competent collection of the works of Nature \vhich 

 have a digression and deflexion from the ordinary course of 

 generations, productions, and motions ; whether they be- 

 singularities of place and region, or the strange events of time 

 and chance, or the effects of yet unknown properties, or the 



