112 THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



Purpureo ; non ilia feris incognita capris 

 Gramina, cum tergo volucres hsesere sagittae. 



So that it was no marvel (the manner of antiquity being to 

 consecrate inventors) that the Egyptians had so few human 

 idols in their temples, but almost all brute : 



&quot; Omnigenumque Deura monstra, et latrator Anubis, 

 Contra Neptunum, et Venerem, contraque Minervam, &c.&quot; 



And if you like better the tradition of the Grecians, and 

 ascribe the first inventions to men, yet you will rather believe 

 that Prometheus first stroke the flints, and marvelled at the 

 spark than that when he first stroke the flints he expected 

 the spark ; and therefore we see the West Indian Prometheus 

 had no intelligence with the European, because of the rareness 

 with them of flint, that gave the first occasion. So as it should 

 seem, that hitherto men are rather beholden to a wild goat 

 for surgery, or to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for 

 some part of physic, or to the pot-lid tha 1 ; flew open for ar 

 tillery, or generally to chance or anything else ^than to logic 

 for the invention of arts and sciences. Neither is the form of 

 invention which Virgil describeth much other : 



&quot; TJt varias usus meditando extunderet artes 

 Paulatim.&quot; 



For if you observe the words well, it is no other method than 

 that which brute beasts are capable of, and do put in ure ; 

 which is a perpetual intending or practising some one thing, 

 urged and imposed by an absolute necessity of conservation of 

 being. For so Cicero saith very truly, Usus uni rei deditus et 

 naturam et artem scepe vincit. And therefore if it be said of 

 men, 



&quot; Labor oinnia vincit 

 Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas,&quot; 



it te likewise said of beasts, Quis psittaco docuit suum ^pe? 

 &quot;Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a 

 hollow tree, where she spied water, that the water might rise 

 so as she might come to it? Who taught the bee to sail 

 through such a vast sea or air, and to find the way from a field 

 in a flower a great way off to her hive ? Who taught the ant 

 to bite every grain of corn that she burieth in her hill, lest it 

 should take root and grow? Add then the word extundere, 

 which importeth the extreme difficulty, and the word paulatim,, 



