THE SECOND BOOK. 97 



and broken, it will seem more foreign and dissonant. For as 

 when I read in Tacitus the actions of Nero or Claudius, with 

 circumstances of times, inducements, and occasions, I find 

 them not so strange ; but when I read them in Suetonius 

 Tranquillus, gathered into titles and bundles and not in order 

 of time, they seem more monstrous and incredible : so is it of 

 any philosophy reported entire, and dismembered by articles. 

 Neither do I exclude opinions of latter times to be likewise 

 represented in this calendar of sects of philosophy, as that of 

 Theophrastus Paracelsus, eloquently reduced into an harmony 

 by the pen of Severinus the Dane ; and that of Tilesius, and 

 his scholar Donius, being as a pastoral philosophy, full of 

 sense, but of no great depth ; and that of Fracastorius, who, 

 though he pretended not to make any new philosophy, yet did 

 use the absoluteness of his own sense upon the old ; and that 

 of Gilbertus our countryman, who revived, with some altera 

 tions and demonstrations, the opinions of Xeriophanes; and 

 any other worthy to be admitted. 



(6) Thus have we now dealt with two of the three beams of 

 man s knowledge ; that is radius directus, which is referred to 

 nature, radius refractus, which is referred to God, and cannot 

 report truly because of the inequality of the medium. There 

 resteth radius reflexus, whereby man beholdeth and con- 

 templateth himself. 



IX. (1) We come therefore now to that knowledge where- 

 unto the ancient oracle directeth us, which is the knowledge of 

 ourselves ; which deserveth the more accurate handling, by 

 how much it toucheth us more nearly. This knowledge, as it 

 is the end and term of natural philosophy in the intention of 

 man, so notwithstanding it is but a portion of natural philoso 

 phy in the continent of Nature. And generally let this be a 

 rule, that all partitions of knowledges be accepted rather for 

 lines and veins than for sections and separations ; and that the 

 continuance and entireness of knowledge be preserved. For 

 the contrary hereof hath made particular sciences to become 

 barren, shallow, and erroneous, while they have not been 

 nourished and maintained from the common fountain. So we 

 see Cicero, the orator, complained of Socrates and his school, 

 that he was the first that separated philosophy and rhetoric ; 

 whereupon rhetoric became an empty and verbal art. So we 

 may see that the opinion of Copernicus, touching the rotation 

 of the earth, which astronomy itself cannot correct, because it 

 is not repugnant to any of the phenomena, yet natural philoso 

 phy may correct. So we see also that the science of medicine 

 if it be destituted and forsaken by natural philosophy, it is nor 



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