XIII. 3.] THE SECOND BOOK. 153 



their opinions, rather than in their true use and service. 

 Certainly it is a thing may touch a man with a religious 

 wonder, to see how the footsteps of seducement are the 

 very same in divine and human truth: for as in divine 

 truth man cannot endure to become as a child; so in 

 human, they reputed the attending the inductions (whereof 

 we speak) as if it were a second infancy or childhood. 



4. Thirdly, allow some principles or axioms were rightly 

 induced, yet nevertheless certain it is that middle propos- \ 

 itions cannot be deduced from them in subject of nature 

 by syllogism, that is, by touch and reduction of them to 

 principles in a middle term. It is true that in sciences 

 popular, as moralities, laws, and the like, yea, and divinity 

 (because it pleaseth God to apply himself to the capacity of 

 the simplest), that form may have use ; and in natural phi 

 losophy likewise, by way of argument or satisfactory reason, 

 Qua assensum parit, open s effczta est : but the subtilty of 

 nature and operations will not be enchained in those bonds. 

 For arguments consist of propositions, and propositions of 

 words, and words are but the current tokens or marks 

 of popular notions of things ; which notions, if they be 

 grossly and variably collected out of particulars, it is not 

 the laborious examination either of consequences or argu 

 ments, or of the truth of propositions, that can ever cor 

 rect that error, being (as the physicians speak) in the first 

 digestion. And therefore it was not without cause, that so 

 many excellent philosophers became Sceptics and Aca 

 demics, and denied any certainty of knowledge or com 

 prehension ; and held opinion that the knowledge of man 

 extended only to appearances and probabilities. It is true 

 that in Socrates it was supposed to be but a form of irony, 

 Scienliam dissimulando simulavit : for he used to disable 

 his knowledge, to the end to enhance his knowledge : like 



