20 INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 



of the greatness of the Romans, who by reason of their 

 large empire needed the service of the most. But the time 

 among the Grecians, in which natural philosophy seemed 

 most to flourish, was but a short space, and that also 

 abused and thrown away in disputing, and affecting new 

 opinions. But from that time to this, no one can be 

 named, who has made it his business to cultivate natural 

 philosophy, and consumed his life in its pursuit ; so that 

 this science has not for ages possessed any whole man, 

 unless perchance one may instance some monk studying in 

 a cloister, or some gentleman in the country, and that will 

 be found very rare. But it has become a kind of passage 

 and bridge to other arts, and this venerable mother of the 

 sciences is turned into their handmaid, and made to serve 

 physic and practical mathematics, or to season a little, 

 young and unripe wits, like a kind of priming, that they 

 may take a second wash in a kindlier and better manner. 

 So he saw plainly, that, from the small number, and hurry, 

 and rawness of its followers, natural philosophy is left 

 destitute. And soon after, he saw also that this had a 

 very great influence on the general state of knowledge : 

 for all the arts and sciences, when torn up from this root, 

 may perhaps be polished and moulded to use, but will 

 grow no further. 



He thought also, how prej udicial and every way hard an 

 adversary natural philosophy has in superstition and the 

 immoderate and blind zeal of religion. For he found that 

 some of the Grecians who first propounded the natural 

 causes of thunder and storm, to men unused to such specu 

 lations, were condemned, on that ground, for impiety : and 

 that the cosmographers, who, by most certain proofs, which 

 no man in his senses would now dispute, asserted the 

 spherical figure of the earth, and consequently the exist 

 ence of Antipodes ; were not much better treated, but in 

 cluded in the same sentence, not indeed affecting life, but 

 character, on the accusation of some of the ancient fathers 

 of the Christian church. And the case of natural history 

 is now much worse, in regard of the boldness of the school 

 men and their dependencies, who having, as far as they 

 can, reduced divinity into method, and given it the form of 

 an art ; have attempted moreover to incorporate the con 

 tentions and turbulent philosophy of Aristotle into the body 

 of their religion. And it has the same tendency that, in 

 our time, no opinions or arguments are found to have more 

 success, than those which celebrate with great pomp and 



