XIII. 2.] THE SECOND BOOK. 1$1 



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 sur 

 gery, or to a nightingale for music, or to the ibis for some 

 part of physic, or to the pot- lid that flew open for artillery, 

 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 : 



Ut varias usus meditando extunderet artes 

 Paulatim. 



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 naiuram et artem scepe vincit. And 

 therefore if it be said of men, 



Labor omnia vincit 

 Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas, 



it is likewise said of beasts, Quis psittaco docuit suum 

 xmpe? Who taught the raven in a drowth to throw 

 pebbles into an 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 of air, and 

 to find the way from a field in 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 im- 

 porteth the extreme difficulty, and the word paulatim, 

 which importeth the extreme slowness, and we are where 



