128 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [VIII. 5. 



according to truth ; so experience, if it be in childhood, 



will call every philosophy mother, but when it cometh 



to ripeness it will discern the true mother. So as in 



the mean time it is good to see the several 



De antiquis 



philosophies. g!sses and opinions upon nature, whereof 

 it may be every one in some one point hath 

 seen clearer than his fellows, therefore I wish some col 

 lection to be made painfully and understandingly de 

 antiquis philosophy s, out of all the possible light which 

 remaineth to us of them : which kind of work I find 

 deficient. But here I must give warning, that it be done 

 distinctly and severedly ; the philosophies of every one 

 throughout by themselves, and not by titles packed and 

 faggoted up together, as hath been done by Plutarch. 

 For it is the harmony of a philosophy in itself whic,h 

 giveth it light and credence; whereas if it be singled 

 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 mon 

 strous and incredible : so is it of any philosophy reported 

 entire, and dismembered by articles. Neither do I ex 

 clude opinions of latter times to be likewise represented 

 in this kalendar of sects of philosophy, as that of Theo- 

 phrastus 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 Fracas- 

 torius, 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 



