86 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [l. 2. 



sciences, as of the jurisconsults, the mathematicians, 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 administra 

 tions and managings, their flourishings, their oppositions, 

 decays, depressions, 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 works that will make so wise a divine, 

 as ecclesiastical history, throughly 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 mar 

 vels, 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 unprofitably, as I am moved to 



Histaria n te them as deficient - For I find no suffi- 

 Naturae :ient OT com petent collection of the works of 

 Errand*. naturc which have a digression and deflexion 

 from the ordinary course of generations, pro 

 ductions, and motions; whether they be singularities 

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

 chance, or the effects of yet unknown proprieties, or the 



